THE discovery of a hand grenade sparked an evacuation drama at a Basingstoke tip.

Officers and a bomb disposal team were called to the Basingstoke Household Waste Recycling Centre (HWRC), in Wade Road, after a worker uncovered the explosive.

Site operative Jarek Orlik discovered the grenade while sorting through a white bag of rubbish which had been put in one of the bins.

The 51-year-old grandfather-of-three was suspicious of the find but picked it up and took it into the site office to show his manager.

Jarek said: “I was not scared. It was heavy and I said to my manager ‘What's this?’, and he said to put it on the floor, and he called the police, who called the bomb disposal team.”

Daily Echo:

Fellow site operative Stuart Paige, 26, who lives in Sherborne St John, added: “There were a couple of customers but we told them to leave because of the situation. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

“No one knew what it was and they (the police) turned round and said this is deadly serious.”

Customers and staff were all evacuated from the site in Wade Road, Daneshill, for an hour at around 10am last Thursday while bomb disposal experts assessed the hand grenade.

After they ruled that it posed no risk, the HWRC site reopened just after 11am.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Defence said: “We can confirm it was a hand grenade but there were no explosives in it, and it was taken away by the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) team.

“At no time was there any risk posed to the public.”

A spokesman for Hampshire County Council said: “The Basingstoke HWRC was closed to the public for around an hour following the discovery of what appeared to be a hand grenade in one of the bins.

“The police were called and a bomb disposal team attended and removed the item from the site.”