Ever wonder what's in the apartment next door?

[werepossum]

Well, for at least two college students it's ninety-one sticks of dynamite, stored under the stairs in an unoccupied duplex.
http://www.newschannel9.com/news/dynamite-996217-duplex-chattanooga.html

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2010/nov/15/police-remove-dynamite-duplex/

http://www.wdef.com/news/91_sticks_of_dynamite_discovered_in_m_l_king_duplex/11/2010

Explosives experts from the Chattanooga Police Department spent eight hours on Monday removing 91 sticks of dynamite that were discovered in a duplex under renovation on Martin Luther King Boulevard.

“It is not known how long the explosive was stored in the duplex nor who the original owner was,” police spokeswoman Jerri Weary said in a news release. “The sticks possessed the ability to cause massive damage to the duplex and several surrounding homes had it detonated on site.”

Police were notified by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms after the bureau received a call from a construction company working on the renovating the Duplex at 906 M.L. King Blvd., Weary said.

The sticks were found in a box under a stairway, according to police.

Christabel Herron says she was getting ready for class on what she thought would be a typical Monday afternoon. She explained, "The construction guys came and knocked on my door. They told me they had dynamite and I needed to get out."

The workers renovating the other half of the duplex at 906 M.L. King made an unnerving discovery under the stairs. A box full of 40 year old dynamite.

Ray James was part of the crew that made the discovery. He said, "I turned it over a little bit and it said 'explosives' so I put it right back down and I said, 'Get out of here and let me call and find out what this is.'"

James got Herron out of the apartment and then Chattanooga police explosives technicians got to work. Sgt. Jerri Weary of the Chattanooga Police Department explained, "Given the amount of time that the dynamite had been there, we didn't want it to become a volatile situation."

Chattanooga Police blocked off the whole road from Park down the block all the way to Fairview. Herron and her roommate got their cars out of the way and then went to her parents' house on 10th Street. Herron added "we got to watch all the bomb squad cars and fire trucks and everything in the parking lot."

The dynamite sticks could have been here, under these stairs for four decades. James added, "I'm glad we got to it when we did because a piece in the box, the guy told be, was turning white and that's not good."

Herron added she was glad to be alive with an intact apartment. She said, "For the past 3 weeks the construction crews have been coming in every day and renovating it. They've been using all this heavy construction equipment over really old dynamite."

A little after 8:00pm Monday evening Herron and her roommate got the all-clear to go back home.

This duplex apartment has been unoccupied since the mid eighties, although of course the dynamite could have been placed there after the tenants moved out. It was old, though, and turning white. And it was not the sort of stabilized dynamite designed for long term storage, which means it can be considered quite unstable. So if you've ever wondered what's in the apartment next door . . .

 

[manimal]

Well, for at least two college students it's ninety-one sticks of dynamite, stored under the stairs in an unoccupied duplex.
http://www.newschannel9.com/news/dynamite-996217-duplex-chattanooga.html

http://timesfreepress.com/news/2010/nov/15/police-remove-dynamite-duplex/

http://www.wdef.com/news/91_sticks_of_dynamite_discovered_in_m_l_king_duplex/11/2010





This duplex apartment has been unoccupied since the mid eighties, although of course the dynamite could have been placed there after the tenants moved out. It was old, though, and turning white. And it was not the sort of stabilized dynamite designed for long term storage, which means it can be considered quite unstable. So if you've ever wondered what's in the apartment next door . . .

Guy I knew who lived on the lower east side started smelling something funny...couple of weeks later they found a husband and wife dead and decomposing....

Had to rip out all the floors, walls, carpets, complete gut rehab to try to get rid of the smell....it never left the hallway...

 

[Modelworks]

We had a housing suburb evacuated because they found a deep freezer packed with dynamite. The things is they removed the dynamite , but later had to return it because the guy living there worked demolition and had a license for it and there are no state laws about storing dynamite in your home if you have the license. Apparently the guys son told one of his friends about it.

Must be nice knowing the guy next door could slip up and blow his house and yours to bits.

 

[Schadenfroh]

A box full of 40 year old dynamite

Correct me if I am wrong, but does not dynamite this old typically explode if you just significantly disturb the container? If so, this guy is lucky.

This also makes me a bit nervous, happened only a few hours from here. Glad my apartment was renovated about 15 or 20 years ago...

 

[Modelworks]

Correct me if I am wrong, but does not dynamite this old typically explode if you just significantly disturb the container? If so, this guy is lucky.

This also makes me a bit nervous, happened only a few hours from here. Glad my apartment was renovated about 15 or 20 years ago...

Dynamite is basically nitroglycerin mixed with sawdust or another filler to make it more stable to handle. As it ages it starts to leak nitroglycerin that dries into crystals on the outside of the sticks. I have seen a guy pick up a crystal off a stick with a knife and throw it on the ground and it explodes. He was in the military for explosives work and builds his own rocket motors so he has stuff like this around.


bad dynamite

 

[manimal]

Dynamite is basically nitroglycerin mixed with sawdust or another filler to make it more stable to handle. As it ages it starts to leak nitroglycerin that dries into crystals on the outside of the sticks. I have seen a guy pick up a crystal off a stick with a knife and throw it on the ground and it explodes. He was in the military for explosives work and builds his own rocket motors so he has stuff like this around.

Didnt you guys watch lost season 1?



when the dude blew up into giblets?

 

[Jhhnn]

The dynamite was probably walled in deliberately by a whackjob of this sort-

http://www.justice.gov/usao/txe/news_release/news/krar_bruey_rivers.pdf

Just in case, ya know?

Perfectly sane people really don't do that sort of thing...

 

[Balt]

Didnt you guys watch lost season 1?



when the dude blew up into giblets?

 

[manimal]

Lol I guess it was a chick

 

[Balt]

Lol I guess it was a chick

Nah, it was

Spoiler

both, just in different seasons. Arzt is the guy who first blew up, so she got "Artz'd" when she later did the same thing

 

[manimal]

Nah, it was

Spoiler

both, just in different seasons. Arzt is the guy who first blew up, so she got "Artz'd" when she later did the same thing

Boom goes the dynamite!


thx

 

[werepossum]

Dynamite is basically nitroglycerin mixed with sawdust or another filler to make it more stable to handle. As it ages it starts to leak nitroglycerin that dries into crystals on the outside of the sticks. I have seen a guy pick up a crystal off a stick with a knife and throw it on the ground and it explodes. He was in the military for explosives work and builds his own rocket motors so he has stuff like this around.


bad dynamite

That's the thing about old dynamite - you never really know. Some of it becomes inert, but mostly it becomes super sensitive. Sometimes just handling it, crystals compacting and sliding against other crystals, can set it off. In Chattanooga we had an old TNT plant, an Army reservation, that stored many kinds of explosives way past their prime. Some bunkers the employees were not allowed to even open the door for fear of accidental detonation. It's a Volkswagen plant now, and it took months to evacuate the bunkers and remove tons of contaminated soil from manufacture and storage seepage.

This wasn't concealed though. I'm assuming that it originally came from a licensed demolitions guy and was just stored there temporarily, which turned into permanently. Incidentally used to be you could buy it for farm demolition. Pretty sure you couldn't buy it by the case though. Of course, this might even have come from the TNT reservation, but I'm guessing it's from a demolitions company.

 

[spacejamz]

Wiley e coyote is probably still wondering why his acme shipment was never delivered...

 

[JTsyo]

Didnt you guys watch lost season 1?



when the dude blew up into giblets?

That's what came to mind when I read it was turning white.