Authorities on Thursday torched a house on the outskirts of San Diego packed with the largest stash of homemade explosives and bomb-making material ever discovered in the U.S.
Using remotely controlled explosive devices, demolition crews ignited a high-temperature blaze they hoped would incinerate the house in Escondido, Calif., without causing any explosions.
Crews set up a 16-foot wall covered in fireproof gel around the home, and neighbors within a 250-yard radius were told to leave by Wednesday. Local police also went door-to-door to make sure no one was still home.
Neighbors living farther away were provided instructions on how to create “shelter in place” by closing windows and doors, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“It will burn very hotly, very quickly,” Jan Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, told The Associated Press. “We want everybody to do this job safely and go home to their family.”
The fire was expected to burn at nearly 2,000 degrees.
The house had been rented by George Jakubec, 54, a Serbian immigrant and software consultant, who was arrested on Nov. 18 on charges of making bombs and robbing three banks.
Jakubec was busted after a gardener working in his backyard was injured in an explosion.
Police said they found stockpiles of explosive material, including the same types of chemicals used by suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The explosive chemicals included Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, or PETN, which was used by shoe bomber Richard Reid in 2001 and as well as the failed attempts to blow up cargo planes last month.
Bomb squad experts also found jars full of Hexamethylene triperoxide diamine, or HMDT, which can explode if stepped on, and several grenades, detonators and other deadly material.
Neal Langerman, a chemical expert for Advanced Chemical Safety, told Fox News that Jakubec could have taken out the entire neighborhood with the stockpile.
Jakubec’s lawyers had asked to delay destroying the house so that the material could be collected from the house, but the bomb squad said it was too dangerous to enter and decided to burn it down.
With Wire News Services