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.
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