Must not be an explosive that will detonate in a fire. :hmmm:

Either that or the IC figured it would be okay to blow up part of a residential neighborhood. :D


Missed the feed, though. :-?

Finding it hard to see the witches that should be tied to the stakes :hmmm:

I hope they're not also after heretics. :o

I am currently living in the Los Angeles area and this has been, if you'll excuse the pun, a "hot topic" on the local news for some time here, so maybe I can answer some questions:

1) Apparently there was no expected explosion according to the authorities because the explosives involved do not detonate by heat alone and require an explosive detonator to go off (sort of like C4); reports here during the fire cite loud "pops" and muffled "bangs that authorities say may be ammunition or hand grenades exploding in the flames

2) The entire surronding neighborhood was evacuated and a portion of a frewway adjacent to the area was completely blocked off

3) The explosives could not be removed due to a high probability of booby traps and "pack rat" condtions in the structure.

4) A high, temporary wall was erected around parts of the structure to shield neighboring structures from the heat or possible blasts

5) This is not a terrorist-linked situation; the house was rented by a man who was also sought in connection with bank robberies; the explosives were discovered when a gardener stepped on a homemade land mine the tenant had placed on the property [the gardener was seriously injured in the blast]

6) The tenant is being held on an enormous bail amount; his lawyers actually tried to stop the destruction of the house saying that the fire would destroy evidence they might need in the defense of their client; a judge turned down the request

7) Lastly, consider the actual owner of the home: not only did he loose his income property, he now appears [according to news reports] to be getting the usual run around from his homeowner's insurance company

маn, he must be having a hard time even just trying to explaining what happened to his insurance company,

"yea the fire department burn down my home because my tenant had it full of bombs" :doh:

Writing as an old and rusty EOD troop, burning is an excellent way to dispose of explosives. Rest assured that prior to burning the building, it was inspected and the mass of the explosives was redistributed to avoid propagation.

This is actually a pretty common procedure. Much safer than trying to extract the explosives.

Platapus, I didn't know that you were an ebook. Got typos? :O:
(<-had to look up eod)

Good that we have experts here on this board who can cover nearly any topic, this prevents that too much bs which is posted here gets accepted as as fact.

I heard that C4 actually burns well and that the grunts in Vietnam used it as a replacement when the fuel pill was missing in the C-rations. The only thing not recommended must be to inhale the smoke - so Billy Clinton would have been save if he was cooking with C4 ;)

The 'man' was a Serbian national.

http://www.fox5sandiego.com/news/ksw...,6057005.story

But hey I dont want to profile or anything.

According to the local news reports here in the Los Angeles area, the authorities investigated for any possible links to terrorism, either foreign or domestic and came up with nothing. The guy is described as either a software engineer or designer who apparently started robbing banks and then went totally spare and paranoid and started building explosive devices. There has been news footage shown of the police rushing his wife away from the house at the time of his arrest several days ago and she is in real fear shouting "He's gone crazy, he's out of his mind" as she is running. The local media has been all over this story from the very beginning and it would seem that if there were any terror link [other than scaring the beejesus out of his neighborhood] it would have come to light by now. Although the local Fox News casts ran teaser ads during the day yesterday hinting broadly at "domestic terrorism" to be covered in their late night newscast, but when I watched the program, little to no mention was made of domestic terrorism in their reports. But, then again that's Fox News for you.

As far as any prep by local bomb disposal or federal EOD for the great burn down, little was actually done, according to local news reports. There has been footage shown here of the interior of the structure shot from outside through the windows of the house by the police. The inside was fully cluttered with junk and debris and they couldn't even use a remote bomb disposal robot to investigate the interior becuse there was no room to maneuver. All sorts of agencies were present at one time or another during the time between discovery of the explosives and the burndown. Local SWAT, ATF, DEA, HSA, FBI, and many other letter combinations got a look at the inside from the outside and apparently none of them wanted to risk a full entry into a possibly boobytrapped building filled with who knows what sort of explosives or chemicals. It was rather a sort of "You first" situation amongst them and that was why they decided to torch the place.

It is not uncommon for explosives or full bombs to be found here in Southern California. There are all sort of nutjobs and criminal elements here that, from time to time, make the news for building, possessing, or trying to set off expolsives. Almost all merit only a minor mention in the news, if at all, but none have been as large scale as this. As someone once said of Southern California in general and Los Angeles in particular, the area reminds one of granola: an abundance of nuts and flakes.