Decades-old picric acid stash prompted North Berkeley shelter order Monday

"The substance that prompted a shelter-in-place order in the Thousand Oaks neighborhood on Monday was picric acid, a compound often used to make ammunition, explosives and dyes, according to the Berkeley Police Department. Police and other safety agencies asked everyone in roughly four city blocks around a home on Colusa Avenue to either stay indoors or leave the area for several hours Monday as they worked to remove the compound."

"In their initial alerts Monday, city officials said only that they had found chemicals consistent with photography labs in the home. In a more detailed statement Tuesday evening Berkeley police spokesperson Officer Byron White said a resident had reported several bottles of potentially hazardous chemicals stored in a basement. They had most likely been stored in the basement for decades, White said."

"The house where the chemicals were found was evacuated, as were three others. Emergency workers put the bottles of picric acid into a frag bag essentially an armored suitcase used to move possible explosives and suspicious packages and bomb techs, police and firefighters hauled it down to the Berkeley Marina in a slow-moving convoy of emergency vehicles, White said. Police secured the Seawall Drive parking lot and the bomb techs blew up the picric acid through a controlled detonation, White wrote."

Picric acid was discovered in a Thousand Oaks home on Colusa Avenue and prompted a shelter-in-place covering roughly four city blocks. Authorities evacuated the house and three neighboring homes and advised residents to stay indoors or leave the area for several hours. The bottles had likely been stored in a basement for decades and were consistent with chemicals used in photography labs. In its dry crystalline state picric acid can be extremely sensitive to movement and poses a risk of detonation. Bomb technicians placed the material in a frag bag, transported it to the Berkeley Marina, and destroyed it in a controlled detonation.

Read at www.berkeleyside.org