Buried Explosives Force Evacuations in Garden Grove

About 120 people were evacuated Saturday night from a middle-class neighborhood in Garden Grove after police found 2 1/2 pounds of explosives buried under a backyard toolshed.

By the time Garden Grove police and the Orange County sheriff’s bomb squad stopped digging at about 10 p.m. Saturday, they had unearthed about 2 1/2 pounds of plastic explosives and stick-type TNT behind a home at 8651 Marylee Drive.

“They’ve done all their digging and are satisfied that’s all of it,” said Garden Grove Police Sgt. Bruce Beauchamp. He described what the bomb squad found as very dangerous.

“From what they have found so far, if it was to explode, houses on each side of it would probably suffer major damage,” Beauchamp said.

He said that police got a call Saturday from an unidentified doctor who had heard fourth-hand that a man had buried “dynamite” in the yard about four years ago, before being sent to prison.

‘No Idea’ Who Buried It

Why the explosives were buried was not clear, Beauchamp said. Although police have no reason to doubt the story, “we have no idea who it was who buried the stuff,” he said, and at the moment, “the doctor won’t say any more or reveal any names.”

Although the threat of buried explosives sounded unlikely, police nonethless called in the sheriff’s bomb squad about 5 p.m. Saturday. As a precaution, they also evacuated 30 homes on Marylee, MacKay Road and MacDuff Street.

Then they begin to dig. Minutes later, under a tin toolshed in the backyard, they found the explosives.

Meanwhile, about 30 people gathered at a Red Cross shelter set up at Zeyen Elementary School, several blocks away from the dynamite cache. Shelter manager Hugh Greenbaum described the mood there as quiet. “There’s no panic. Everybody’s just wanting to know when they can go back home,” he said.

The Red Cross was providing meals for displaced families and a canteen with hot and cold drinks for sheriff’s deputies and police. Greenbaum said cots and blankets had been brought in for those who might have to spend the night.

Some of those in the shelter said they were calm, but at first they had panicked when they heard about the explosives.

Said Martha Sandaval, 30, who lives two blocks from the house where the explosives were found: “We all got really scared. People were running up and down the street, panicked” as the firefighters and police asked them to leave.

By 8:30 p.m., it was boring at the shelter, she said. “We all want to go back home.”

Elizabeth Arteata, 12, had been visiting Sandaval, her cousin, for the weekend and had learned of the explosives when she returned from seeing a movie and found the street blocked. Elizabeth said the only thing she was worried about was Sandaval’s three dogs and three canaries, left behind in the house.

Grocery clerk Phill Williams, 35, has lived on Marylee since third grade. He and other neighbors have spent their time at the shelter getting to know one another and trying to figure out why anyone would have buried explosives in the yard, he said.

“I used to know the people” who lived at 8651 Marylee, he said. “They were pretty normal. . . . This is pretty unreal.”

Late Saturday, Beauchamp said that Rickey Six, the current resident of that address, had come home shortly after the bomb squad decided that they were through. Six knew nothing about the explosives and was grateful that police had responded to the tip, Beauchamp said. He stressed that Six was not a suspect in this case.