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Louisiana State Police via AP
This photo released by the Louisiana State Police shows piles of explosive powder that were found by authorities at the Camp Minden industrial site in Doyline, La.
Police have evacuated a town in northwest Louisiana while they move out around 6 million pounds of illegally stored explosives.
About half of the approximately 800 residents of Doyline, where scenes from HBO's popular "True Blood" series have been filmed, were evacuated Friday after authorities discovered around 1 million pounds of explosive powder stored by Explo Systems Inc. at Camp Minden, a former army ammunition plant.
Authorities moved to evacuate the town of its remaining residents Sunday after discovering up to six times more M6 artillery propellant -- 6 million pounds -- at the site, according to NBC station KTAL in Shreveport.
Police and Explo employees have moved just under 1 million pounds of the explosives into 18-wheelers, and have segregated another 250,000 pounds of the material for future removal, KTAL reported late Sunday.
'Time-consuming' process
In a statement, police said the process was “time-consuming” but so far there had been “no unexpected problems, incidents and injuries.”
The explosives had been improperly stored, officials said. The material should have been housed in a bunker approved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and registered with the Louisiana State Police explosives division.
Webster Parish Sheriff Gary Sexton did not expect the evacuation order to be lifted until Tuesday, KTAL reported.
Doyline has shut local schools on Monday and was considering staying shut on Tuesday as well, according to Webster.
Doyline is situated about 270 miles northwest of New Orleans.
Louisiana State Police Col. Mike Edmunson said that the owners of Explo were in South Korea, but were scheduled to return to the United States on Monday, according to KTAL.
State police said the improperly stored materials were discovered during a follow-up inspection to an Oct. 15 explosion at the Camp Minden property.
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According to its website, Explo “has been demilitarizing / recovering explosives / propellant for over 15 years” and “has a unique, on-site capability for purifying valuable TNT from tritonal for reuse.”
It has operated at Camp Minden for seven years, according to the site.
Phone calls to the Louisiana State Police went unanswered early Monday. The man who answered the phone at the Webster Parish Sheriff’s Office said he was not authorized to comment to the media.
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Leave a Comment:
I used to live near the Savanna Ammo base where they made MOAB and a lot of other strong stuff. I lived 14 miles away and when they did test or demo detonations, all the windows in my house shook and the pictures would be crooked. There is a safe way to store millions of lbs of explosives. You construct cement buildings that are separated by 300 feet in all directions. Each building has an adequate grounding and lightning arresting system. You also take considerable precautions for static when around the bundles. 75 years and no accidental explosions mean something is right. The only major incident was crate was not built right and it shifted and blew up. The second was not too long ago where workers were being tested for toluene in their blood. Turned out to be a bad air handling system.
I'm glad we found this before the terrorist did. WTF is going on with people responsible for this schit anyway? I hope they prosecute to the fullest extent of the law.
Nah, they will get away with a slap on the wrist. After all who cares if a few hundred people get blown up right?
Sickening.
Fine this company for every dollar that they possess and take them out of business.
3,000 tons of TNT-like ? Don't worry folks, everything is under control and you are completely safe.
Has ATF director B. Todd Jones been taking a bit of a nap?---I wonder what his email traffic looks like [honey, baby, snookems...].
Perhaps the Obama administration mistakenly classified this facility under the regulations for Whoopee cushions.
At least no one got hurt from the 3,000 tons of explosives just sitting around like that!
The Framingham MA pharm killed 36 people and hundreds are injured. And the board of directors was all volunteers... not government watchdogs as most people assume. Everyone on the board had conflicts-of-interest (taking drug money) and one guy had a serious history of corruption and malpractice. Now the political gang are claiming that they will fix everything that went wrong.
It is only a matter of time before SMOC, Genesis Counseling, DSS, MWMC, get even worse headlines for doing what they are doing.
There goes the Mayans plan to end the world.