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Explosive-Laden California Home To Be Destroyed
wiredmikey writes with this snippet from an AP report:
"Neighbors gasped when authorities showed them photos of the inside of the Southern California ranch-style home: Crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals that are normally the domain of suicide bombers. ... Now authorities face the risky task of getting rid of the explosives. The property is so dangerous and volatile that they have no choice but to burn the home to the ground this week in a highly controlled operation involving dozens of firefighters, scientists and hazardous material and pollution experts. ... Some 40 experts on bombs and hazardous material from across the country and at least eight national laboratories are working on the preparations. They have analyzed wind patterns to ensure the smoke will not float over homes beyond the scores that will be evacuated. They have studied how fast the chemicals can become neutralized under heat expected to reach 1800 degrees and estimate that could happen within 30 minutes, which means most of the toxins will not even escape the burning home."
It's all answered in TFA. You're welcome. :)
I am sure they could think of a proper way to get rid of all of that stuff, but they have been looking for an excuse to burn something down and maybe get some cool explosions out of it
The world is how you make it
If you're volunteering to fetch potentially trip-wired explosives from a building with so many explosives that they'd have a hard time finding all the pieces of you afterwards then good luck with that.
Sounds familiar.
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
Sounds like a completely bullshit reason.
Get a military ordinance disposal team in place and demolish it if you really have to, but burning it? That's just looking to create a disaster.
I understand it's a rental property and the owner is not to be compensated, because it was declared a "public nuisance". DOH! Should've kept up with those annual inspections!
We clearly don't have all of the information on that decision. Nevertheless, in reading the article, not compensating the owners struck me as just being mean. The property should be taken by eminent domain (to protect the public welfare), owners compensated fair market value, the structure buried under a heap of dirt to protect the neighbours and the contents extracted by robot, slowly, with the explosive bits being neutralized a small bit at a time, in a controlled way.
Burning the entire house, when the authorities do not know what nastiness might be hiding in unlabelled bottles, is not a controlled disposal. I, for one, do not believe that explosives will burn for 30 minutes, and that no toxicity will be released. The house may burn for 30 minutes, but the explosives are going to incinerate a whole lot faster, assuming none of them achieve detonation conditions. Am I the only one who is given pause by the implicit assurance of a so-called controlled burn that none of these explosives are going to detonate?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Not really. I'm guessing that they're dealing with a large number of relatively low explosive devices. If it were a small number of highly explosive devices, they'd disarm. But if you've got that many devices, it's a lot safer to just burn the place down knowing that you'll have to shield the surrounding buildings. .
You are sure its a lot safer? I'm so relieved.
What could possibly go wrong.
Explain how going in, picking up one item, walking out to the bomb disposal truck, rinse repeat, for a couple weeks (if necessary) is going to be so hazardous.
How much evidence as to sources of these materials will be destroyed in the burn down and inevitable explosion?
(Yeah, I've seen the silly containment fence. Laughable!).
In fact one wonders if the destruction of evidence isn't part of the motivation here. After all, someone's ass is on the line for that crate of live military grenades, right? Some one sold that guy all this stuff. Was it the government?
Not after its all gone. No way to pin it on any agency then.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Don't ask a cop. Then again, don't ask a lawyer either. Both will give you overly conservative anwers.
Very often a cop is not required to know whether certain 2A activities are legal, and will arrest you anyway. Sure, the charges might not stick... But this IS California that the article is about.
And yes, I live in NorCal.
in reading the article, not compensating the owners struck me as just being mean.
Really? Run an equity into the ground in clear violation of untold number of regulations and reward the owner. That's going to end badly for everyone.
Think about it and apply this thinking to other things like, oh, banks for instance. How about extending it to any corporation in the industry you choose to dislike the most?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The problem lies in the fact that they discovered this when the gardener stepped into some of the residue left over from the creation of some of these explosives, and went "BOOM!".
Tell me how many weeks you think they'd be able to play the lottery and not have the whole thing go off in their face as they are attempting to carry stuff out?
Everyone is an expert.
In spite of the fact that "some 40 experts on bombs and hazardous materials from across the country and at least eight national laboratories..." have decided on this course of action, all of us World of Warcraft players and PHP developers have concluded it's a bad idea to handle it this way.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
One, this happened over a period of years, not weeks.
Second, if the tenants destroy your property creating a meth lab, the government would not reimburse you. For all intents and purposes these tenants destroyed the property. I as a tax payer should not compensate the landlord for his loss.
No, the government is destroying this house. The tenants only stored unusual materials that the government has deemed dangerous.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
SCOTUS is out of it's mind. It's fairly clear that when the Bill of Rights was ratified, they meant arms of the type you would use to defend yourself from a corrupt government.
Of course the 2nd amendment doesn't mean you can't be required to keep and bear those arms in a manner that doesn't endanger the community. The guy in TFA certainly fails there.
Should I be required to invade the tenants privacy more often and visit the tenants monthly? Weekly? Daily?
Body scanners/pat-downs at every entrance. Every time a door opens, in or out.
It's the only way to be safe.
*Still* negative function...
We don't need a trial by jury to conclude that this house is PACKED WITH EXPLOSIVES. This isn't a crime-and-punishment thing, this is eliminating an imminent threat to public safety.
Who is the house owner and why this amount of explosives?
One thing is for sure, he's definitely not muslim.
Else the country would be at "red" threat level and the 24-hour news channels would have live coverage on site since the minute anybody found out about it and the politicians like Gingrich and Giuliani would be preening on camera.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
They had Gov. Schwarzenegger declare a state of emergency. What other "due process" should there be in order to destroy a house packed with explosives?
The house still has value, if the contents would be removed. Instead of removing them and leaving the house standing, the government CHOSE to burn down the structure.
Perhaps it is cheaper to burn and rebuild the house than repeat the process of remove, transport and deal with each piece a robot can carry out?
The guy knows where he put stuff.
The guy knows what the stuff is.
Maybe he just started messing with the unstable stuff in the last few weeks he was there?
Yes, it's likely that they could just cart the explosives out pound by pound and dispose of it normally. But they don't have perfect knowledge and think it's too risky.
It's not security theater because it isn't security. It's just bomb disposal, which you clearly know more about then all their exports. It's the opposite of security theater since force evacuating people from their houses and burning down a house isn't going make people feel more secure, it's going to make them feel less secure.
Sure burning down the house isn't nice for the owners, then again it's California the various chemicals already there probably mean the site has to cleansed with lava before dogs are allowed near it anyway.