The Los Angeles Police Department’s (LAPD) botched fireworks detonation in South L.A. two years ago has cost taxpayers more than $9 million so far, according to Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia.
After an anonymous tip alleging that someone was selling illegal fireworks out of an alley came in on June 30, 2021, LAPD officers were led to a residence on East 27th Street in South Los Angeles.
When officers arrived at the pink house early that morning they found tens of thousands of pounds of commercial fireworks, in addition to hundreds of individual “homemade fireworks.”
Fearing that the “homemade” explosives were too risky to transport, authorities made the fateful decision to detonate the fireworks in a “total containment vessel”—an expensive enclosure designed to suppress the blast of an explosion—in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood.
The fireworks were loaded into the vessel, in front of a crowd of reporters and cameras, and a massive explosion ensued, destroying homes and sending the 500+ pound door of the containment vessel more than 1300 feet into someone’s roof.