Originally published at: Los Angeles police bomb truck explodes following fireworks raid | Boing Boing
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“And the bomb truck gets the fireworks…”
Something in that batch was out of tactical fireworks and into the strategic category?
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“Oops”.
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This is nothing more than a large scale demonstration of the fact that firecrackers detonated inside of a coffee can are far more spectacular than firecrackers detonated on the street.
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LOL. What idiots. Was it the full 5000lb? All of it at once??
That is the kind of thing you drive out to a quarry and detonate.
And black powder is pretty darn stable, just keep it away from flame, static electricity, etc. They could also have soaked it in water instead. They wanted to try out their fancy truck and fucked it up.
I bet that poor guy whose car got blown up with it is fucked and won’t be reimbursed. Could ruin his life with that unexpected bill.
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You’re supposed to do that sort of thing in a quarry, right?
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Little did the police know that there were supplies for gender reveal parties mixed in with the fireworks.
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I love the official cop language that attempts to highlight that “we” didn’t do it, “it” did it.
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Obligs: “That’ll buff right out.”
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LOL. They were like “Wut happen???”
They forgot they were on record saying what they were going to do.
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Basically, they just raised the bar for dangerous stuff to do with fireworks. I’m sure the illegal fireworks folks will be rising to the challenge.
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Not to worry, they/po po will just buy another one, with tax payer’s money…
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I mean, that’s the only explanation, isn’t it? There was no other reason to have done this. I was trying to figure it out - even homemade fireworks would be made of something relatively stable, so why detonate it there? But they were just fucking around, wanting to try out a new toy.
Probably more than one car was totaled, too. Not to mention all the broken windows and who knows what other kind of damage was done by the blast to houses (I can see smoke coming from the nearby houses after the blast). This is going to be very expensive for a lot of people who probably can’t afford it, and it was totally unnecessary.
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Assuming they were insured for more than third party liability, I’d expect their insurance company to reimburse them and go for the LAPD to recover all their costs. Of course, they may well not be. In which case they need a lawyer.
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They missed a chance to liven up the annual police family picnic.
(And by that I mean setting them off one by one.)
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Hint: containment vessel is your problem. For transport, it’s appropriate (but smaller amounts, people) but actually setting 2 tonnes of explosives off in a container is, sorry, just dumb. I used to attend a university (NMT) with an explosives research center [1] and they blastform a lot of steel much heavier than that entire vehicle with a fraction of those loads.
They’re lucky that no one was seriously injured, much less killed.
[1] EMRTC (http://emrtc.nmt.edu/) – look them up, fun site. They did a lot of consulting for Mythbusters and some of the most popular shows were shot there.
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Oh man, I see you haven’t ever had a newer car totaled. Even with the insurance that is supposed to replace how much you owe, vs how much it was worth, you can still end up in a hole.
Friend had a really nice Boss Mustang that got t-boned by a teen driver. 
Or, you know, lots of poor people have minimum insurance.
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Oh, I have. A 3-year old very low mileage, high-spec car I was the second owner of. Totaled by another driver. And the first offer from the other driver’s insurer was £5k less than I paid about three months previously, Eventually they paid out more than I paid, as they admitted the car’s actual spec, and the fact I’d added a towbar after buying, meant I could never replace it for what they were offering. But it took a lot of escalation and persistence. (But nothing to do with what I owed. I always buy outright for cash.)
But yeah, lots of people have minimum third party liability cover. A false saving with a more expensive vehicle. With an old banger, fair enough. And if you can afford a more expensive car you can afford comprehensive cover or a slightly cheaper car and comprehensive cover.
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For those just tuning in - there’s a super loud and obnoxious channel bumper at the end of the video. The last clip of content is the one that mutes after the explosion.
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