♪♪ ♪♪ -The Los Angeles Police Department knows and understands the Fourth of July is a very important holiday where we get to gather and celebrate with family, friends, and neighbors.

The LAPD wants all Angelenos to be safe.

Fireworks are not permitted anywhere in the city of Los Angeles.

Think about your neighbors, pets, and our veterans with PTSD.

-Ahead of the Fourth of July festivities, city and county officials in Los Angeles warning the public about illegal fireworks.

-While many people may move just outside our boundaries and see fireworks stands that are open and selling what is considered safe and sane fireworks, even those fireworks here in Los Angeles are prohibited.

-The fire department demonstrating the damage they can cause.

♪♪ -Tonight is a clear demonstration of the clear and present danger that fireworks in this city pose when you have underground operators, sellers that gather this material, store it in an unsafe and dangerous fashion, exposing entire neighborhoods to the real risks of a loss of life.

[ Fireworks popping ] ♪♪ ♪♪ -We just spoke with the captain with LAPD's Major Crimes Division who told us it's actually close to well over 5,000 pounds of illegal fireworks they found inside this home in South Los Angeles.

Then you take a look behind us here, and you can see that right now they're using one of these trucks here to get these big boxes of those illegal fireworks.

-Um, LAPD tells us this is one of the largest busts that they have seen so far of illegal fireworks just ahead of this holiday.

-It's unclear what led to this bust.

If someone called in something suspicious or what exactly happened.

But you see LAPD out here.

There's the big bomb squad truck as well.

Look at that thing on the back.

It looks like it's almost like a big pressure cooker or something where they may be able to actually detonate some of these explosives on site.

-That's gonna be quite a loud explosion and similar explosions or consecutive explosions going on for several minutes.

Nobody's been evacuated.

The street value, the estimate is probably north of $200,000, I am told.

Again, one person in custody.

Charges include child endangerment because there were kids in the house at the time.

[ Police radio chatter ] -They're carrying out the explosives now.

-Yeah, thanks, Eric, let me know when they got the hatch closed, okay?

-Copy.

HQC, explosives are secure and they closed the hatch.

-Fire in the hole!

-Units, be advised -- -[ Explosion ] [ Car alarms blaring ] -Chief, I need you back here immediately.

This thing went way south.

-Engine 14, meet me on 1.

[ Blaring continues ] 14 From Battalion 1 on 1.

-Hey, Battalion 1, go ahead for 14.

What do you got there?

[ Siren wails ] -So, basically this thing was a way bigger explosion than they had anticipated.

It had a pretty good blast out of that container.

[ Blaring continues ] Check those PD over there.

[ Blaring stops, siren wails ] [ Police radio chatter ] -Everybody started running and I -- like, I couldn't find my mom.

I was like, "Mom, where are you?"

You know?

And my -- Everybody was screaming, going crazy.

-Then I just heard something like really strong hit.

And then, like, the bed moved and the TV.

So I came out running -- I came out running from the room, like, really worried, like, scared.

-Alright, good evening, everyone.

So I'm going to give you a basic outline of what we know right now.

I believe we have some of the finest, if not the finest, bomb techs in the world.

They're constantly training, honing their craft.

They're leaders and are referenced from across the world.

The damage that we saw resulted not only in the physical damage to some houses, breaking largely of glass.

The range of injuries with them I'm thankful and grateful are non-life-threatening.

But more concerning was the injuries to the civilians and officers that were there.

Our total numbers at this point, it's approximately 17 personnel.

10 of those are first responders, being police and an ATF agent.

And the remaining seven are civilians, community members.

-We're told one of the people injured was an ATF specialist who actually suffered a traumatic brain injury, and it looks like it'll be several days before any of these residents are able to return home.

-Those improvised explosives were described as approximately 40 Coke can-, Coca-Cola can-size devices that had fuses simple fuses on them.

In addition to those 40 devices were an additional 200 smaller devices of a similar construction.

This vessel should have been able to safely dispose of that material.

-Prior to this explosion, we had some really close-up video of a bomb technician loading in several boxes into that spherical tank, almost as many as she could fit, and she appeared to be taking precautions, although I have to say, it was not a situation where she was suited up.

These were large, heavy boxes, obviously, that she was loading in, but she was loading them in with her bare hands in a short-sleeved shirt.

And I'm told even after we left that there were more devices loaded into the truck, into that tank.

Sometimes they'll even send a robot to handle the device.

It appeared that the urgency wasn't really there in terms of -- in other words, there was no immediate concern of a spontaneous explosion such as this.

-We're not going to speculate at this time what happened, but I can tell you fireworks are dangerous, and you're going to have accidents when you're dealing with fireworks if you're not careful.

-In all, the ATF says there were far more fireworks confiscated, not 5,000 pounds, but get this -- 32,000 pounds.

Meanwhile, the cleanup continues in this neighborhood as many are still not allowed back in their homes.

-Andi Garcia doesn't even live by the explosion.

She's two blocks away, but not only did she feel the blast, parts of it ended up on her doorstep.

-We've seen a lot of things, but this is -- this is insane.

-When LAPD's bomb containment truck blew to pieces, the cover on the device got launched nearly a mile away where it sliced through a tree before smashing into this home.

Seeing this damage reminds Andi this really was a close call.

-Oh, my God.

What if this thing would've landed on someone?

What if it would've landed on my aunt, on my daughter?

Something went wrong.

Someone's at fault and someone needs to be held responsible.

Seriously.

-They're on their way, dude.

Check, check, check, one, two.

♪♪ ♪♪ -The fact that the door, the lid flew 2 1/2, 3 blocks, what does that say about that blast?

-Those are details of this investigation that the department will certainly need to -- my apology -- to address.

-I just want to be very clear about this.

The particular things that they use inside this vehicle, that they feel that they are not safe enough to travel with.

That is why they explode them in the neighborhoods in this very, very expensive vehicle is because they determine that it is safer to do it there than to travel with them on the roadway.

Can you imagine if this thing would have exploded on the 405?

[ Explosion ] [ Car alarms blaring ] -And you think about the 405.

But let's go back to this neighborhood where there are little kids.

There are black and brown communities, people who live in that area.

It does not matter.

This should not happen.

-Lieutenant, can you please come over here real quick?

I'm sorry.

I just want to -- -No, no, we welcome this.

We welcome this.

-I want to bring him over here because our anchors are very concerned -- I'm sorry, We're live on TV right now -- that they are thinking that this was done just in this neighborhood.

And I know that this is something that you guys do basically in every neighborhood when it comes to this type of explosives.

Can you explain to me why the decision was made to try and explode them here versus travel with them?

-Sure.

So, when the techs find a substance that's really volatile and very dangerous, they try to detonate it in place because it's just too dangerous to transport on a normal vehicle because of obviously an explosion.

So, after the explosion we discovered that some folks were still within that vicinity that didn't answer the door.

And that's how we discovered that some folks were injured.

-So they were supposed to evacuate, but they didn't answer their door when you guys were doing the evacuation?

-Correct.

So, you know, obviously, certain limits -- -DeMarco, did you have one more question?

-No, no, he just answered the question.

I was going to ask about any mandatory evacuation orders that were put in place.

He said he went door to door.

But I also want to hear from residents because we don't just want to take his side and his word.

There is an investigation and there are two sides to this story.

[ Explosion ] [ Shouting indistinctly ] -The terrifying explosion was captured on cellphone video Wednesday night by the Martinez family who've been staying at a Red Cross shelter set up at the Fred Roberts Recreation Center.

-Like, our house was destroyed and there's some valuable things inside.

That's hard to recover 'cause, like... And it's gonna take a while to get that back.

-I don't hear very well.

I don't see very well.

And my head hurts.

-The truck was parked right in front of their house.

They're hurt.

They lost their home.

Jose Becerra and his brother also lost the cars they use for work.

-Was everybody home?

-Yes.

The police go there in the morning and they say, "We found some fireworks in the neighbor house.

So you have two options.

Leave the house or stay inside of the house and you're going to be safe."

-Becerra's daughter says she's overwhelmed.

-I have a few hundred dollars in my bank account, a credit card, and 10 people in a house, and no resources, no guidance.

It's not just that the house is gone.

It's our entire life has been obliterated.

-So now we're going to hear from Commander David Kowalski.

[ Crowd booing ] -It's unfortunate that some of you were uprooted from your homes, people were injured and family members were injured.

We had LAPD bomb tech officers who suffered injuries.

We had eight people that were transported to a hospital along with all of our partners in the community.

So we feel -- we feel that this accident, we wish it had been avoided.

-So, Commander Kowalski, can you first tell us who determined how many pounds were deemed safe to put into this containment vehicle?

-It was -- Our Newton commanding officer was one of the incident commanders at that time.

-What was his name?

-What's the name?

What's the name?

What's the name?

[ Crowd booing ] -Can that name be shared at this time?

[ Crowd chanting "We want names" ] -If you cops want to talk about rebuilding the community, get the out of your houses and let these people move into your homes.

Give up your [bleep] paychecks and give these people your money because it's your [bleep] people that have caused all these issues.

I lived in Compton for 30 years and I've dealt with all your [bleep] and watching my black and brown brothers being killed by you [bleep] So [bleep] you.

-Thank you, Manuel.

-No, I'm not done.

I want to say it in español.

-One minute.

-La chota, la policía, esos cabrones están diciendo que les quieren ayudar en su vida.

Pues que les den sus cheques, que se salgan de sus casas y que los dejen a ustedes que se metan a las casas de ellos porque los taxes de nosotros son los que le están pagando a esos cabrones.

Y se van a la casa en la noche y se duermen como que no hicieron madre.

Que se vayan a la chingada.

-The aftereffects of that fireworks explosion that rocked a South L.A. neighborhood back in June continue to be felt.

The families of two people who recently died say that accident was the cause and they want the city to do right by them.

-Evacuee Lorna Hairston recalls the blast, she says helped kill her 72-year-old partner, retired educator Ozzie Hutchins.

-Three windows full of glass came down on me and Venetian blinds, and I couldn't get them off of me.

-Hairston says their home right next to the blast is where Ozzie Hutchins was born.

-If the blast hadn't happened, do you think Ozzie would still be alive?

-Oh, yeah, of course.

There's no reason.

Why would he die?

What would he die of?

You know, it was just stress and that.

-The coroner says a heart attack was partly to blame.

-I come over here to check and see about the windows, which they did not put up.

And when I got back to the motel, he had expired.

-Activists say a man in this house died when his roof collapsed from the blast.

-If this was Westwood, if this is Beverly Hills, if this was Santa Monica, would we be here a month later with boarded-up windows?

We don't think so.

-I want to personally express my apologies to every resident, business operator and customer that was traumatically impacted by this incident.

[ Explosion ] -The LAPD comes clean about its bomb technician's catastrophic mistake that rocked a neighborhood and injured more than a dozen people.

-Yeah, let me make it real simple.

The LAPD bomb squad, it seems, thought they were detonating explosives or fireworks with an explosive capacity of 16 pounds, 1-6, in a container that could hold as much as 25 pounds.

All is good, except that the actual amount in there was close to 42 pounds.

So now you know why it probably exploded.

And people here are asking themselves, how does that happen?

Why would LAPD bomb squad not weigh such volatile explosives with a scale instead of estimating visually?

-Our personnel did an estimation based on a visual inspection based on the X-ray as well as capturing that material for evidence in a bag.

And based on years of experience that they have, many years of experience, in gathering, dealing with an unstable and a dangerous item, so your handling of this, it's not like Play-Doh, and so to that end, when they chose to physically estimate it, we, of course, are looking at that standard and challenging that standard today.

-And now at this point, Chief Moore is saying that he has pulled off the field the supervisor and the bomb technicians who were involved in the incident pending an investigation, and he's ordering a top-to-bottom review of the protocols and how they do things.

They may have worked in the past, but they may not work anymore.

We should be able to get the full investigation results in a month.

I'm Christina Gonzalez in South Los Angeles.

Back to you guys.

-The 42, that includes the counter charge, correct?

-Yes.

-Okay.

You talked about 15, max capacity is 25.

Were they operating under the assumption that 15 was the right number or 25 was the right number?

-I don't have their specific sta-- -You need to be fired, Chief Moore!

-I don't have the specific statements on that.

-[Bleep] you, Chief Moore!

-Okay.

-He deserves to be fired for his explosion in a South Central neighborhood!

-Who was the manufacturer?

-You need to be fired!

Chief Moore must go!

Chief Moore will go!

-I don't have that information for you right now.

-How many people have been taken out of the field?

-I'm here -- I'm here for the press conference.

-Is it the whole -- -Sorry?

-How many people have been taken out of the field?

-[Bleep] you, Chief Moore!

-The individuals that were involved in this, five.

-You shouldn't be telling anybody numbers because you don't know how to do math!

-And is this the largest -- -You reported -- -At 16.5, would this have been the largest -- -[Bleep] you, Chief Moore!

-I don't know.

-Okay.

-[Bleep] you, Chief Moore!

Chief Moore must resign now!

You are responsible for this!

-Okay, anyone else?

Thank you all.

Appreciate your patience.

♪♪ -Around 20 families were displaced.

The majority are still waiting for affordable housing options or repairs.

-The bomb squad repeatedly ignored warnings from one of its most experienced technicians.

-We reached out to LAPD, but they say they do not have a comment at this time.

♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪