Controlled burn starts at Pacoima explosion site to remove volatile materials
After exhausting all other options on Friday, bomb disposal teams have opted to slowly burn the house at the center of the Pacoima explosion site as well as the remaining volatile materials inside.
"This house is essentially a bomb," ATF Special Agent in Charge Kenneth Cooper said during the press conference. "We are basically notifying the public to render this explosive device safe; we are going to use fire in a slow, methodic burn to alleviate that threat."
To protect the residents and surrounding neighborhood, the Los Angeles Police Department evacuated 60 homes while firefighters covered nearby buildings with thermal gel and erected a metal mesh fence to prevent projectiles from flying out. The city has also asked the Environmental Protection Agency to measure the air quality as the operation continues. The Los Angeles Fire Department has also placed control lines around the leveled home and surrounded the area with sand to prevent containments from spreading with the water runoff.
"We have taken the precautionary measures to protect the neighboring residences and confine the fire to the location where this incident occurred," LAFD Chief Ronnie Villanueva said. "Our primary concern is life, property and the environment."
At 11 p.m., authorities lit the home on fire, detonating what appeared to be fireworks. For the most part, the fire only appeared to burn the home and some surrounding vegetation. However, a small spot fire appeared a few yards down the road. After briefly allowing the flames to burn, crews used a remote-controlled robot to douse the area immediately surrounding the property with water.
Since Thursday, police, firefighters and their federal partners have been crafting ways to safely dispose of the remaining explosives but determined that the volatile materials left behind were too unstable for transport. Instead, firefighters began the delicate process of a slow, controlled burn with diesel fuel to safely destroy the property.
"Unfortunately, some of these chemicals are reactive to water and can't be transported safely," Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. "As a result, a controlled burn is the only viable method to safely mitigate the threat posed on this site. I want to stress that this is a dangerous situation, and all members of the public should really avoid coming in or around this area until this situation is resolved."
McDonnell said the leftover firework-making materials created a dangerous environment equivalent to a drug lab.
"It's the equivalent of having a meth lab," McDonnell said. "They put themselves at risk, and they put everybody in the environment at risk, extremely volatile."
Following the botched fireworks disposal operation in 2021, Villanueva stressed that the bomb squad teams have the necessary resources.
"We have more resources that are out there," he said. "We're going to have more resources that will be out there in that same area. So, we're looking pretty good."
In 2021, the LAPD Bomb Squad detonated fireworks in the middle of a South LA neighborhood without weighing any of the explosives.
"It was clear that the practice of visually estimating the weight of the disposal product was the only method used by the LAPD Bomb Squad during TCV detonations, both prior to and including this one," the Office of the Inspector General wrote in a 2022 report.
The catastrophic detonation injured 17 people and damaged dozens of surrounding buildings. The "Total Containment Vessel," a 525-pound device the bomb squad placed the explosives in, flew 1300 feet away.
"We find that changes have to occur at all levels of operation of this bomb squad...decisions that we now look at in hindsight and cannot justify," then-Police Chief Michel Moore said.
After three years, the city agreed to pay $21 million to settle the claims from the residents affected by the botched explosion.
