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On the government-mandated incineration of private property
Diplominator
Hardcore PorgRegistered User regular
Hardcore PorgRegistered User regular
(This is a debate that's been unfolding locally and I thought it'd be interesting to get your take on it.)
My hometown of Redding, CA is not usually a very interesting place. Too far north to be of interest to the rest of the state, to far south to be, technically, Oregon. We have mountains and we are where the water comes from (well, not this year). Not much else.
However, a couple weeks ago there was some...excitement. On February 6 EMS and fire got called to a house because a man had managed to blow off his own hand in some sort of explosion. What they found when they arrived was a house that was more or less literally a powder keg. According to the guy, he was a model rocket enthusiast. Others might describe him as more of a bomb-making coot.
Fast forward to last weekend. After over a week of evacuating the neighborhood, trying to get inside with EOD bots, and trying to figure out exactly much kaboom was lying around, the local fire and law enforcement services decided the best way to solve the problem was, well...
Yeah, they burned it down.
Unsurprisingly, some people are not all that okay with the idea of the government setting your stuff on fire. Imagine that. There was a letter to the editor that called it socialism (but, then again, what else are letters to the editor for?).
A second but related discussion is unfolding about exactly how dangerous the house was to begin with. The sheriff said the contents included:
-"significant amounts" of HMTD and mercury fulminate.
-20+ lbs of gunpowder
-thousands of shotgun shell primers
-20 lbs of potassium chlorate
-other precursors for explosives and black powder
The guy's lawyer says that there were only ten grams of explosives and that the things like gunpowder were innocuous and not a problem.
For what it's worth, people heard loud booms when the house burned, and something blew the guy's hand off.
So, that in mind, what do you think? Was law enforcement justified in burning the house down on only the possibility that it could be dangerous? Is this the start of a totalitarian nightmare-state where innocent model rocket enthusiasts/bomb-making crazy people are unjustly accused and where their possessions are destroyed? Did they do the expedient thing this time but set an unacceptable precedent?
News articles about the story. The local paper has a paywall for some stuff but as far as I can tell these are opened up.
Before burn.
During burn.
After burn.
My hometown of Redding, CA is not usually a very interesting place. Too far north to be of interest to the rest of the state, to far south to be, technically, Oregon. We have mountains and we are where the water comes from (well, not this year). Not much else.
However, a couple weeks ago there was some...excitement. On February 6 EMS and fire got called to a house because a man had managed to blow off his own hand in some sort of explosion. What they found when they arrived was a house that was more or less literally a powder keg. According to the guy, he was a model rocket enthusiast. Others might describe him as more of a bomb-making coot.
Fast forward to last weekend. After over a week of evacuating the neighborhood, trying to get inside with EOD bots, and trying to figure out exactly much kaboom was lying around, the local fire and law enforcement services decided the best way to solve the problem was, well...
Yeah, they burned it down.
Unsurprisingly, some people are not all that okay with the idea of the government setting your stuff on fire. Imagine that. There was a letter to the editor that called it socialism (but, then again, what else are letters to the editor for?).
A second but related discussion is unfolding about exactly how dangerous the house was to begin with. The sheriff said the contents included:
-"significant amounts" of HMTD and mercury fulminate.
-20+ lbs of gunpowder
-thousands of shotgun shell primers
-20 lbs of potassium chlorate
-other precursors for explosives and black powder
The guy's lawyer says that there were only ten grams of explosives and that the things like gunpowder were innocuous and not a problem.
For what it's worth, people heard loud booms when the house burned, and something blew the guy's hand off.
So, that in mind, what do you think? Was law enforcement justified in burning the house down on only the possibility that it could be dangerous? Is this the start of a totalitarian nightmare-state where innocent model rocket enthusiasts/bomb-making crazy people are unjustly accused and where their possessions are destroyed? Did they do the expedient thing this time but set an unacceptable precedent?
News articles about the story. The local paper has a paywall for some stuff but as far as I can tell these are opened up.
Before burn.
During burn.
After burn.
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I think the differences are A. it was the guy (and his wife)'s home and people might have a more visceral reaction to that and B. my understanding is that they didn't know precisely how dangerous the house was.
Whether or not those differences are different enough to matter, well...
It's possible that someone here did something really wrong, but the surface details of this case sound like the government response was reasonable.
I mean don't you need to like, pay him for the house if you're going to do that without charging him with something?
yeah we have laws for that
did he break any?
Looking at the AFT explosive listing the only two things there that qualify(as explosives) are the HMTD and Mercury Fulminate. And 'significant amounts' has no real meaning. Could be 2 blasting caps, could be a couple pounds.
Was there a court order or anything like that? If they spent a week fucking around at the place, I have a hard time seeing an imminent need to burn it down without one. Hell it makes a lot more sense to just bring in the fire department and flood the house with hoses and then remove stuff after for any prosecution. East the owner isn't even under arrest. And first of the articles mentions indirectly that he was willing to remove the stuff for them.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I think in all probability he'll sue the city/county and that's what his lawyer's statements have been about. The stuff about him having only 10g of explosives and the statements where he said burning the house and evacuation were unnecessary seem like they're setting up to argue that burning the house was unwarranted.
I don't know about most of this but I don't know they didn't spend a week fucking around at the place. My understanding is that they got the guy to the hospital and then blocked everything off and didn't go near it.
so if a kid blows his hand off with an M-80 the cops should burn his house down?
60 pounds isn't a lot of "explosives", we're not talking about a cache of IEDs or a forty year old crate of TNT, it's a fire hazard for sure but that's it
again i don't even think what he owned was illegal, rocket motors and shotgun primers are perfectly legit things you can own even if you could hurt yourself with them, are we saying that law enforcement should basically get to make things up as they go along in regards to the law?
Isn't one of the benefits of bomb squad bots supposed to be that you can relocate the dangerous materials to a safer location to blow them up, rather than someone's house?
If the kid's house is found to be filled with dangerous materials stored stupidly? Yes they should burn it down.
In what world is 60 pounds of anything not considered a lot? Especially explosive material?
pleasepaypreacher.net
My point exactly
My best friend in highschool was a model rocket enthusiast, I should have burned his house down for public safety!
They are being extremely vague about how much "Explosive materials" or dangerous chemicals there were, and it doesn't sound like they gave the victim the opportunity to clear it out himself or have someone do it for him
If it turns out that the kid have a large amount of M-80's in his house that might pose a danger to others and cannot be removed safely, then yes, the cops should be able to burn the house down.
Did he have it stored in such a way that could prove dangerous to others? You seem to think the cops came in saw some kind of comical barrel labeled "XXX" and then said "Fuck this burning the house down."
pleasepaypreacher.net
I'm not willing to give the cops the benefit of the doubt when it comes to burning down someone's place and not offering compensation or even involving the judiciary when there was no imminent threat to public safety
And you are assuming that he didn't have them stored properly. If he blew his hand off, it's safe to assume it was when he was mixing it together and not just some spontaneous event.
edit: 55 homes evacuated
And there in lies the disconnect. I assume police don't want to go around blowing peoples houses up, and so this was a legitimate explosion until proven otherwise. Don't want your house exploded? Don't store bomb making materials in it in Merica, seems like a safe thing to do.
pleasepaypreacher.net
That's my big question. I'm going to assume that they went through and documented everything and have pictures showing how dangerous the situation was. But whenever law enforcement starts quoting numbers, I immediately start to wonder how much they inflated them.
Frankly I'm surprised they were even willing to risk burning down a house in the middle of what is looking like possibly the worst drought in california in 500 years.
He may have an imminent domain case but other than making the rather tenuous connection between law enforcement destroying explosives and law enforcement taking possession of your house he doesn't have much of a chance.
Alright you heard the man, lets burn down every farm and gun owner's house in the country
Make your own ammo? Why you are in possession of "substantial amounts" of mercury fulminate and explosives
This isn't a bad point but they weren't literally on the street. An evacuation center was set up at a local elementary school and then at the National Guard armory.
Really, we're all making assumptions here because we don't have the full story. We don't know if he had his explosives/chemicals safely stored in a safe (or wherever explosives people store their explosives), or if he had them spread out on a rickety card table. Whatever assumptions we make are going to influence our opinion of the story until (and unless) we get all the facts from everyone involved.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Now suppose that they try and disarm everything and it explodes killing the next door neighbors?
But suppose the fire broke containment and started a massive wildfire that burned down a whole community of homes? From the admittedly vague articles, it doesn't sound like they did much, if any real site prep to contain things.
They planned the burn, announced the burn, evacuated for the burn, monitored the burn(even the air to ensure that there was not a significant amount of toxic particulates)... I am assuming that they had decided the burn was the safest/most likely potential outcome and monitored the burn in such a manner as to prevent as much damage as possible
It wasn't full of TNT, that wasn't a possibility, the doors weren't rigged with claymores, we're not talking about a bomb, we're talking about homemade rocket motors and shotgun shells, a risk of fire but not a huge explosion
they had to evacuate so many people because when they burned it down it released toxic gas everywhere
The house was burned down because it was no longer considered a safe residence by the authorities. You can't just abandon it, because you dont' want some kid breaking in and discovering another load of explosives hidden in a wall. So, burning it protected the community.
One of my professors in college worked for the EPA, specializing in explosive materials. Basically whenever they found dangerous materials that could explode, he was the guy they brought in. From the stories he told us in class, he fucking loved blowing shit up if he could. In his opinion, even if materials could be moved safely without risking any injuries or lives, blowing it up was the best solution, plus it was more fun. This is one situation where other options should have been explored as opposed to blowing up a house.