LOS ANGELES (KNX) – Two men were arrested after police seized nearly 20 tons of illegal fireworks from a warehouse in South Los Angeles on Wednesday.
It happened in the 900 Block of East 61st Street. Los Angeles City Fire inspectors were performing a safety check inside the warehouse that was occupied by a clothing company when they saw a room blocked by a hanging tarp.
LAPD Captain Brian Morrison with the Emergency Services Section told KNX News that inside the room were boxes of illegal fireworks stacked floor to ceiling.
“If I had to give you a guess, (it) was approximately 20 by 30 and based on box weight, gross weight, we were looking had approximately 20,000 pounds just taken out of that first room,” he said.
The fireworks are believed to have been shipped in from Nevada.
Bomb technicians and detectives worked for over 12 hours to remove the boxes. Morrison told KNX News forklifts had to be used to load up trucks to transport the fireworks to a safe location.
Two men found inside the warehouse were questioned and then arrested. Felony charges could be filed against the. Their identities have not been publicly released at this time.
Morrison also said he believes the amounts of fireworks were larger than those that were found in a home at 27th Street and San Pedro in 2021. The fireworks found in that home detonated inside a containment vessel and caused an explosion in the neighborhood.
It was later revealed that the explosion was caused by a miscalculation of the explosive weight of the fireworks.
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