'It Felt Like A Really Hard Earthquake': Neighbors Shocked After 16 Injured In Botched Illegal Firework Detonation By Police It is my hope that the ten LAPD Officers that were injured were all Bomb Squad members, and they are ALL retired from the department for being STUPID… They really need to get some better, more experienced EOD Professionals to supervise these Yahoos…
How do you even screw that up? I'm not an EOD guy, but was trained in blowing stuff up to keep the enemy from getting any use from it, it's NOT all that hard to do! Fire works would be super simple to set up and have a controlled series of small detonations! You DONT store a bunch of that sweaty stuff all together, history tells us that!
The videos that folks outside the evac zone took with their cellphones are telling… These yahoos had no idea what they were doing, and to do it in a neighborhood, was SO NEGLIGENT as to be Criminal…. Even a first year Energetic Apprentice knows better than what these dufuses did…. I mean really where were the ExEOD .MIL trained Professionals who are supposed to know at least basic EOD Method-ology? Good Lord, they only moved folks back like 75 yards or so… This is even dumber than when the Oregon Fish & Wildlife Folks blew up that rotting Dead Beached Whale on the Oregon Coast a few decades ago, and at least they were not EOD Trained Professionals…. I wonder how much it will cost the LAPD to replace that Semi-Truck and trailer with all their cool toys and equipment that was destroyed in this goofup.. Millions?
I just blow shit up for my own entertainment and could have told them that was a stupid idea. Are a large portion of explosives people really that stupid?
Apparently the LAPD BOMB Squad folks are…. Can you imagine what these yahoos would do with a box of Tannerite?…
They might try to spin it as an 'accidental explosion' but one of the LAPD yelled 'Fire in the hole!' just before the explosion.
The rig alone will run close to a million. The inside stuff (if too dumb to take it out before triggering the blast) cannot even be guessed, but a couple robot snoops and transporters at 100K or so a pop isn't out of line. Somehow, I always thought that those things were designed to contain an explosion during transport to a demolition site, not contain a deliberate blast. Also, there should have been an intelligent load out done, not a willy-nilly "just throw it in" approach. These days, stupid comes out on top.
Come on, BT...Where could there possibly be any problem with detonating 5000 lbs of explosives' in a box downtown?
Even I know you break stuff like that down, separate the energetics from the pyrotechnics, and keep them widely separate, and for god's sake, you don't ever transport live and uncontained energetics! You don't ever pack a large container with Energetics like that, you water it down and make it inert, same with the pyro, you mix in a foaming agent that removes the o2 and encapsulates the agents preventing ignitions! Some of that stuff dosnt like water, that's why the foaming agents! Those dummies would have been better off letting the fire dept handle the stash of fireworks, at least the Fire Dept. are trained in dealing with that sort of thing and have the correct chemicals!
Would have been safer to let the public "dispose" of the fireworks on their own. Also, the writer/proof reader need to go back to school, first line of the article: At least 16 people, including 10 law enforcement officers.. then it goes on to state: Chief Moore said the injuries to the 10 civilians are non-life-threatening. So what was it, 10 LEO's injured or 10 civilians? Or was the Chief just foreshadowing that the LEO's injured were the idiots that thought this was a good idea and there were soon to be fired?
Part of the rest of the Story… The LAPD was on site for the most part of the day, removing the Energetics from the site… There was an ATF Agent, on scene for most of the removal, and during the decisions about demo’ing the load.. The Fireworks were NOT in the house, but stored elsewhere on the property, and were still in their original packaging and on the original shipping pallet... In the house, the LAPD found a number of “IEDs” that were individually removed, and x-Rayed to determine the internal workings, but the composition of the Energetics used was NOT determined during that examination.. The fireworks were loaded into the Trailer still on their pallet.. The “IEDs” were loaded into the Transport Energetic Containment Vessel, and subsequently demo’ed.. Where these dufuses were Criminally Negligent was to NOT ascertain the composition of the “IEDs” Energetic, so they could calculate the Energy that would be released upon demo, and make sure it fell with-in the Containments Rating… and then subsequently deciding to demo the load inside an inhabited neighborhood, instead of moving the load to a Safe Area for Energetic Demolitions… This was a MAJOR Screw-Up… Basically the Fireworks were immaterial to the detonation, and used in the Media, to show that Fireworks are dangerous, right before the 4th of July weekend… Now on top of all this the LAPD is charging the suspect with Manufacturing Destructive Devices, Fire Code violations for storage of the FireWorks in a Residential Area, and Child Endangerment because his 10 year old brother lived with him… I have little issues with the LAPD’s Actions, right up until they started removing any and ALL of the Fireworks AND Energetics, including the “IEDs”… After that was started these Yahoos, were Criminally Negligent in both the removal procedure, and decisions concerning removal from the scene, to a safe location, and decisions to demo the load at the scene, without full understanding what they were dealing with… The whole bunch should be fired for Terminal Stupidity, including the ATF Agent who was on scene…. My opinion, YMMV…
Local new just had a story about this with one of our Bomb Squads leaders saying the detonation had to be caused by static and could not have been predicted or prevented. Hopes our locals never have to deal with any real explosives!
That is BS, piled higher, and deeper… See post #6 in this thread…. Also Static Electricity setting off Energetics just sitting there is a rare occurrence, especially in “IEDs” encased in metal.. We do NOT have a description of the makeup of these devices, or how they were designed to be initiated… Without that information, the “Static Discharge” senerio is just not even an educated Guess… Much more likely a BS cover your Ass tactic…
if you read the reports closely - it was ONLY 10 pounds - and nothing went "wrong" - someone very stupidly got lazy and decided to detonate in the residential neighborhood some unknown & untested explosives .... I like some of the reports blaming the truck - the sand fleas manage to blow up MRAP vehicles all the time - just takes enough TNT ...
Yeqh, they put 10 lbs. of C4 on top of 5000 lbs. of basically varying grades of BP, set it off in a blast container that was inside a container...I'm sure the blast container did what it was supposed to do, disperse the rapidly expanding gasses in all directions, but that damned trailer got in the way...ooops. Only thing missing is some stinky whale blubber.