Explosions rock Michigan city, but it's not terrorists, it's the U.S. Army

Army drill scares residents because of short notice

An apparently normal day in Flint Michigan was interrupted by explosions that sent people scrambling for cover and dozens of calls to the local police department.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Homes were shaken on Tuesday after explosions occurred as part of a U.S. Army training exercise, which had been planned with the city for six months.

This training operation, which includes aircraft and simulated ammunition, will continue for the next 10 days.

Residents were given a warning about the exercise at 11:30 in the morning, but the first of the explosions went off that day at two in the afternoon.

The city's spokesman, Jason Lorenz, said that the short notice was given to prevent citizens from being in the area where the drills were taking place.

"Obviously, I can't speak for the Army on that, but we try to give people a heads up when we can, we can't go into too much detail, we don't want people just coming to these things and sightseeing,"  he said.

Lorenz later apologized for any problems that the short notice caused. "We apologize that the timing of the public notification was a little bit off," he said. "In the future, as the military is working, we will try to let people know as early (as possible) in advance that this is going on."

Flint police also commented on the incident. "Yesterday was a unique situation," said Chief James Tolbert. "For whatever reason the timetable was moved up. And we put it out as soon as we could. We did put it out before there was any type of explosives."

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