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Whoretron8000 t1_jbmq4x8 wrote

They blew up 2.5 tons of fireworks in a neighborhood... After taking their sweet time loading it unsafely, playing with their toy robot when they wanted to, then injured a bunch of people and traumatized many more AND tried to get the dude slanging fireworks ("with a street value of $200,000") to cover the cost of damage they caused...

Sounds about right.

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Jeep_Stuff t1_jbmyl77 wrote

That was only 45 pounds according to the news reports in the doc. 2.5 tons would have been a little bit bigger...

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Thetallguy1 t1_jbn6kpn wrote

As someone who's blown a charge with a net explosive weight of around 20lbs.... yeah that definitely was not 2.5 tons, 45lbs sounds completely right. The OKC bombing was a little over 2.5 tons, and that literally evaporated half a building.

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Tony2Punch t1_jbn8nm8 wrote

The OKC bombing was a fertilizer bomb not a bunch of fireworks

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Own_Win6000 t1_jbnpm3h wrote

the Physics don’t care where your energy comes from

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TheChemistAstronaut t1_jbnzpt8 wrote

But the chemistry does, lol

Different stuff explodes with different energy. You're telling me however many tons of fertilizer bomb would explode the same as the same amount of fireworks?

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thunder_blue t1_jbo0767 wrote

No, they're telling you that the explosive force is the same in both cases. '45 lbs' is a description of the force, not the weight of the bomb/fireworks.

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mrgonzalez t1_jbo44bh wrote

The original quote was on the weight of fireworks.

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turnpot t1_jbpgvwg wrote

This is incorrect. First of all, the force from the fireworks is not measured in pounds; even if you're talking about the shock wave, the peak force from that at a given point would be measured in psi (pressure), and would vary wildly depending on where you measured it

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Own_Win6000 t1_jbo157n wrote

Did you get your Chem BS from the university of phoenix?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

Ahahaha he blocked me - every redditors favorite way to win an argument

I’ll always miss you /u/thechemistastronaut

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TheChemistAstronaut t1_jbo2hsd wrote

Resorting to a personal attack, which is also just misguided (which chem BS teaches about explosive TNT equivalent measurements lol?) and linking Wikipedia instead of an actual source relevant to the situation at hand. Instead of being constructive you're just trying to inflate your own ego.

I suggest going and reading the (more relevant) LAPD 27th St After Action Report, LAPD 716 E. 27th Street AAR, and ATF Final TCV Report on the incident, which I did prior to commenting.

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CowMetrics t1_jbp7k51 wrote

Not to mention each forework is in its own compartmentalized container. Taking far longer for them all to go off than if they were all ‘disassembled’ and put into a singular container. And then one that could partially contain the blast until everything was lit. Not all explosives are the same, they have different expansion and mechanisms of which to go off

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entotheenth t1_jbnqe5e wrote

A ton of fireworks is not a ton of explosives, it’s mostly paper.

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Own_Win6000 t1_jbnst23 wrote

Explosions are measured in the unit “tons of tnt”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent

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WikiSummarizerBot t1_jbnsu06 wrote

TNT equivalent

>TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The ton of TNT is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be 4. 184 gigajoules, which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a metric ton (1,000 kilograms) of TNT. In other words, for each gram of TNT exploded, 4.

^([ )^(F.A.Q)^( | )^(Opt Out)^( | )^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)^( | )^(GitHub)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)

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entotheenth t1_jbnu9zi wrote

And what does that have to do with the amount of perchlorate and paper wrapped around a Roman candle.

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resumethrowaway222 t1_jbo3xil wrote

How did only 45 pounds do that much damage? I set off more than 45 pounds of fireworks most fourths of July.

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misterchief117 t1_jbo87jn wrote

They substantially exceeded the rating for the Total Containment Vessel (TVC) they put everything in. It's likely they added too much initiating explosives and were off by a few zero's in their calculations...if they even did any.

https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/TVC-TN_0115-508C.pdf

This source suggests TVC's the size they used are rated between 2 to 10kg of TNT equivalent explosives. If the LAPD estimated the fireworks had 45 pounds of TNT equivalent, then they REALLY fucked up.

This essentially just turned it into a bigger bomb with more shrapnel.

The source also states that, "The TCV is designed to contain the bomb while being transported to an area where it can be rendered safe."

In other words, they should have never detonated this within a populated area.

What's really fucking stupid is that boxed/packaged fireworks are incredibly safe. Even bootleg ones are as long as they're treated with respect. Consider they made it all the way to wherever you brought them without spontaneously exploding...

The LAPD should have just hauled the boxes away to a remote site and then either detonated them or use them for a public firework event. I'm surprised they didn't just sell them back to the community and arrest anyone who bought them because they're corrupt fucks.

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fencepost_ajm t1_jbozlrx wrote

Or simplified, they turned their explosion containment vessel into a giant pipe bomb, magnifying the damage.

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surfer_ryan t1_jbq52x6 wrote

Yeah they kept harking back to "imagine if it had gone off on the road!?!?!" But like guys how do you think that shit got there to begin with it just materialized?? It wouldn't go off on the road unless they idk set it off... even then had they bothered to do literally any kind of measurements of weight at all... they would have known it was too much... almost double the maximum capacity... that is straight negligence.

LAPD needs to just take the L on this one, move on and learn from their mistake.

Absolutely unbelievable they are trying to play this off like they didn't fuck up here. Like I get it to some extent but holy shit sometimes you fuck up and you just gotta own it.

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reflUX_cAtalyst t1_jbpeuqc wrote

ANFO and black powder fireworks are NOT the same thing.

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Thetallguy1 t1_jbpg8ho wrote

I don't use ANFO, I dont think I ever had. Mostly RDX based explosives. The biggest mistake they made though was when their amateur hour bomb tech "visually estimated," the NEW instead of doing some basic as algebra.

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MagicHamsta t1_jbou9l4 wrote

They used standard police weighing procedures, the entire container (the bomb containing vehicle) was included as part of the weight of the contraband.

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Whoretron8000 t1_jbqye1j wrote

Oh crap, I thought it was the whole stash when writing the comment. Which was 5000 lbs according to the begining of the doc.

So they added way more explosives to set it off... Only blowing up a tiny fraction of the total.

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Loggerdon t1_jboqr8c wrote

The guy said 32,000 lbs of fireworks, not 5,000.

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Bdsman64 t1_jbq3vye wrote

That was the entire cache, not what they detonated.

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BeefArtistBob t1_jbnglqs wrote

Everything you said was wrong but thanks for continuing.

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Bearbear360 t1_jbo722j wrote

I rewrote his statement since everything he said was wrong. Clearly, what happened was someone else blew up not fireworks in an open field, after hurriedly and safely loading them. No robots were used. There was no explosion. No one was injured. No one was traumatized. The lapd immediately took responsibility for their mistake and didn't try to blame anyone. /s

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p0st_master t1_jbob0o8 wrote

Everything you said is wrong and you’re a terrible artist who is completely out of touch with the human condition.

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