Explosion kills one child, injures six others

[gbran]

http://www.bakersfield.com

The Bakersfield Californian | Tuesday, Aug 29 2006 5:49 PM
Last Updated: Tuesday, Aug 29 2006 6:38 PM
An explosion has killed one child and injured six others in the Oleander neighborhood, according to Detective Greg Terry with the Bakersfield Police Department.
Dozens of emergency personnel descended on the 1900 block of Maple Street around 5 p.m. and two children have been removed from a home on stretchers.
Neighbors said children found shotgun shells and placed them in a barbecue pit. They exploded and injured the children.
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TV now saying maybe 2 dead. Maybe it was a "device"?

BTW, when I was young, a few of us were hunting/camping. I threw a handful of shot shells in our fire. We hid behind the rocks waiting for them to go off (while freezing too). They did go off, but there was no loud bangs or explosions.

This is a pretty sad story.

 

[stevelyn]

Shotgun shells?

I gotta call BS on this one.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

hmmmm

maybe 12 guage flares? i never tossed any in a campfire but they might go off and hurt someone

 

[Fred Fuller]

Pushing the BS button on this one also.

How OLD were these "children?"

lpl/nc

 

[nibb]

Yes they can hurt someone. But i dont think they can make such a big explosion to kill 2 people. How many shell did they trow into fire? 200 shells or what?

 

[LaEscopeta]

Maybe it was a "device"?

IIRC the Unibomber got the powder for his devices by opening shot shells. My guess is these children were teenagers who got plans from the internet and were trying to “be like Ted.”

 

[Zero_DgZ]

I'd doubt old Ted had anything to do with it. But it may well have been a home-cooked "device" that some kiddies read about on the internet.

My guess is smokeless filled empty CO2 cartridges ("cratermakers") which can be quite powerful, quite nasty, and also throw shrapnel. Or it could have been something bigger.

I've chucked live ammo into campfires before, once on a dare to tick off a couple of blissninny friends of mine. (And no, we didn't stand right there and watch, either...) Not smart, no, but not explicitly dangerous: Without a chamber or barrel you get cookoffs and a sad little sputter and pop, and the lead doesn't go anywhere.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

depends on ammo

i taped 3 30 06 shells to an m80 blew the trim of a door and opened the door with a decent bend in a steel door. i believe the m80 set off the shells with sympathetic detonation. boom was too loud for just m80

in my defense i was young and stupid back then

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

makes more sense

http://adelphia.net/news/read.php?id=13053112&ps=1011&cat=&cps=0&lang=en

we'll see

 

[the 22 junkie]

Sounds familiar to that prof. that blew of his hand with an unexploded 40mm shell. Now kiddies, remember, UNEXPLODED ORDINANCE IS NOT YOUR FRIEND!

 

[Keith Wheeler]

Yep, when I first read this thread I thought "ah, 40mm grenade". 1) looks like a big shotgun shell, and 2) number one cause of UXO injuries in the US.

Man gives kids 40 mm shell to play with; 2 killed, 5 hurt

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/08/30/shell.explosion.ap/index.html

 

[SeanMTX]

My guess is smokeless filled empty CO2 cartridges ("cratermakers") which can be quite powerful, quite nasty, and also throw shrapnel. Or it could have been something bigger.

Jeeze...I thought me and my friends were the only ones dumb enough to make these.

They never threw shrapnel....just split down the side...BUT they were powerful enough to blow apart pay phones.

Back then, no one was blowing up Federal Buildings or towers...it was 99% stupid kids blowing up stumps and mailboxes.

 

[Zero_DgZ]

Eh. I made one (filled with cheap black powder, not smokeless, no less...) and threw it under a big cardboard box out at the point. Afterwards I put the box back together and there were at least five holes punched through it. I recovered some rather pointy little chunks of sunshine, including one that was wedged deep enough into a log that I had to use pliers to pull it out.

Here's what I wrote about it many moons ago:

High Velocity Metal and the Ways it Can Kill You

I don't have my doubts anymore...

 

[the naked prophet]

I thought it was, in general, illegal to make explosive devices, no matter how small and how "harmless" they seem?

If not, I'm gonna have to take some of those CO2 cartridges out and have some fun!

 

[Zero_DgZ]

Well. State law varies.

Federally (last I checked, which was before a good portion of this "terrorist" folderol) it was legal as long as you didn't sell, distribute, cross state lines with, or use to harm anyone. E.g. blowing stuff up on your own property without bothering anybody was A-ok. These days I'd highly doubt that's the case; Incidents involving explosives are genereally handled very seriously by humorless men in uniforms with nothing better to do, even if it's just a case of throwing M-80's at plastic army men (as my former boss once eloquently put it).

And, of course, your state or municipality really does have the power to stick it to you and probably has laws prohibiting just about anything to do with explosives without the proper paperwork on file. For this reason I don't have a pyrotechnic hobby anymore (unless you count my 4th of July road trips to freer states down South...) because it's simply too much trouble for such a tiny little thing.

Guns go bang pretty good anyway, and are still legal.

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

co 2 cartridges

it appears that young lunacy leads to simultaneous independant develpoment of great ways to mess up. we cut the casings off estes rocket engines ground em up and packed powder in empty co 2 cartridges. when byron used a hammer to crimp the end shut it went off. took tip of his thumb and pointer and peppered him with metal.His moron friend me standing facing him got nothin more than scared Wish i could say scared straight but just scared more careful

 

[Zero_DgZ]

What in tarnation possessed him to try to crimp it shut? The carts don't need any closing at all - not even a sealant around the neck unless you want 'em to be waterproof.

 

[SeanMTX]

I'm with Zero....even as 14-16 year olds we knew not to use metal tools once there was powder in there!!

We used the green wicks from a hobby store and used rubber cement to seal the hole in the top.
(The hole was widened to make filling easier)

 

[cassandrasdaddy]

wicks

we used the waterproof wick too and were setting em off under water.epoxy after crimping. the oxidant in engines worked great. we were about 13

and i hold that i am living proof god looks after fools and drunks and i'm double protected

 

[Biker]

"God looks after fools and drunks"...Ahem, guilty as charged.
~burp~

Biker