Paul Sanchez, a KTLA photojournalist, said he was filming the containment unit from about 50 feet away when it exploded. Eight or nine families had to find other housing for the night, Moore said. Officials established a 300-foot perimeter behind the vehicle and evacuated the north and south sides of 27th Street.īut the explosion that followed brought 75 firefighters to the scene, caused damage to homes, consisting mostly of broken glass, and injured law enforcement officers and civilians. Less than 10 pounds of the devices were transferred into a semitruck, which Moore said was rated, with its outer containment shell, to handle 18 pounds.
Officers also found improvised explosive devices with simple fuses - about 40 the size of Coke cans and 200 smaller objects of similar construction - and conducted X-rays to determine their contents. Police detonated the devices at 7:37 p.m., believing that the vehicle would be able to contain the explosion, but there was a “total catastrophic failure of that containment vehicle,” Moore said.
A truck that was being used to collect the explosives also appeared to be severely damaged.Īt a news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said officials responding to a home on the 700 block of East 27th Street had found several thousand pounds of illegal fireworks as well as improvised explosive devices that were “more unstable.”Īn LAPD bomb squad transferred the improvised devices into the iron chamber of a semitruck that’s meant to contain such explosive material, he said. The blast damaged cars in a residential neighborhood and left debris on the streets, video on social media showed. A major explosion in South Los Angeles on Wednesday evening damaged homes and injured 17 people, including police officers, as a bomb squad attempted to safely detonate improvised explosive devices that had been seized from a home along with about 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks.