Storage Lot Shut Down--2 Years After City Found Explosive Chemicals Cache

State health authorities have shut down a self-storage lot in Long Beach to remove a cache of highly explosive chemicals discovered by city officials more than two years ago but never taken away.

A team of state toxic chemical experts, the Los Angeles County sheriff’s bomb squad and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week are studying how to dispose of the material, which they say is so explosive that the nearby 710 Freeway may have to be shut down as a precautionary measure when it is hauled away.

“I don’t know why they didn’t do something about this before,” said John Hosanna, who took over as manager of the Store for Less storage yard last year.

Hosanna has been living with his wife and two sons on the property for more than a year--just yards from the two containers--without knowing they were dangerous.

“I don’t want to be asleep and go up in smoke,” Hosanna said. “You have to tiptoe by those things.”

State health officials, summoned by the city, shut down the storage business Friday and ordered that a guard be posted around the clock to keep patrons away.

Neither Richard Smith, hazardous waste operations officer for the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services, nor Don Cillay, city environmental health officer, returned phone calls to explain the city’s actions.

Several jars and drums of acids and other potent chemicals were found abandoned in the storage yard in November, 1988, said Allan Hirsch, spokesman for the state Department of Health Services Toxics Program.

The chemicals were discovered after the renter of the storage unit fell behind in his payments. The former managers began proceedings to auction off the contents and found what appeared to be the remains of an illegal drug lab.

The chemicals were determined by health officials to be dangerous. The city sealed them in the two huge metal bins in April, 1989, and marked them as hazardous.

They sat there for two years, about 100 yards from the busy 710-San Diego Freeway interchange and near 700 storage garages where renters stop by to drop off and retrieve belongings.

Storage yard manager Hosanna said officials came out periodically to check on the situation, but took no other action.

The chemicals--including picric acid, sodium azide, perchloric acid and yellow phosphorus--are all potentially explosive and could be set off by exposure to heat, friction or shock, officials said.

Picric acid, when allowed to dry out, turns from a solution to a crystal that is particularly volatile. Some of the picric acid in the container has begun to crystallize, Hirsch said.

“Most of these chemicals can explode under the right circumstances,” Hirsch said. Investigators are working to determine how extensive the damage would be if the chemicals ignite.

“I’ve been told that if that went it could take out this whole property and blow us all to the other side of the freeway,” Hosanna said.

Experts from the state and county are considering various plans to dispose of the material, including detonation. If the danger is found to be extensive enough, the 710 Freeway might be closed while the chemicals are removed, which could take as long as a day, Hirsch said.

Meanwhile, patrons of the storage area have no recourse.

“My stuff isn’t insured in there,” said Julian Burger, who went to the garage over the weekend to get his vacuum cleaner and found the storage yard gate chained shut.

“If everything I own was to get blown up, I’d be sitting here with a pile of junk.”