Long walks on this Kamloops beach could end in a tetanus shot

KAMLOOPS – A leisurely stroll along the beach in Centennial Park ended in a two-person clean-up expedition for one Westsyde couple.

Mark and Andrea Sandberg found hundreds of rusty nails along the beach. The discovery Tuesday night, July 28, prompted them to pick up as many nails as they could over the following two nights.

“There are still more in the water and as the water is receding we're still finding more,” Mark says.

He first came across the nails while he was walking west towards the city and along the beach behind Centennial’s dog park. He picked up one and realized quickly there were many more just like it.

“I kept finding more and more and soon my hands filled up,” he says.

The couple asked a dog walker along the beach for a bag and soon that was full too. When the Sandbergs returned home, a count showed they had collected over 100 nails.

The next day the pair set out with the mission to collect as many nails as they could. Mark actually weighed what they found the second day and it totalled 10 and a half pounds.

Andrea says they wanted to collect the nails before somebody, or some dog, got hurt.

“Some of them were sticking straight out of the ground,” she says.

Ken Salter with Ask Wellness says they have collected drug paraphernalia — mostly needles — from Centennial Park, but they haven’t found nails.

He has personally found many nails with a metal detector in both Riverside and Pioneer Parks though. He believes the nails at Centennial Park came from the saw mills that stood along the Thompson River at the turn of the century.

“They are handmade and square shaped, and really old looking,” he says, adding he believes some of those nails might have been in the water for 80 or 90 years.

Parks Supervisor Shawn Cook says the nails might be a result of people burning pallets over the years. He says a city crew will be at the park Saturday, Aug. 1, to clean up the beach.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Dana Reynolds at dreynolds@infonews.ca or call 250-819-6089. To contact an editor, email mjones@infonews.ca or call 250-718-2724.

— This story was corrected at 10:12 a.m., Sunday, Aug. 2, 2015 to add clarity to fourth paragraph.