A man evacuated from his home in the exclusion zone has described a “scary” and “stressful” situation as he received an emergency alert to leave his house.
Ian Regan moved with his sister to Crown Hill from Keyham, where the unexploded bomb was discovered.
Asked how he first knew he needed to evacuate, Mr Regan said: “We got a safety alert on the mobile phone, an automatic alert.
“It was quite scary in a way, but it’s very effective. And so we immediately packed up and put the cats in the boxes.”
Mr Regan said he feels safe now but the situation was “quite stressful”.
His home was not within the first or second cordons, but fell in the exclusion zone for the military convoy transporting the bomb to the sea.
“They set up this cordon, there were lots of people affected – I think 1,500 people had to leave their homes,” said Mr Regan.
“The horrible thing about it was many of them actually went to pick their children from school, went to go home and found that they couldn’t get back in.
“People had left ovens on, they had pets at home. So it’s very stressful for those people.”
Mr Regan said people in the houses surrounding the bomb were briefly allowed to return to collect their belongings due to the potential that the bomb would need to be detonated in situ.
“I have to say the authorities have been very good about handling the human element of the situation,” he said.
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