Keenan Thomas | Knoxville News Sentinel
Thirty-six hours after the discovery of a box of commercial-grade explosives that prompted the evacuation of surrounding neighborhoods, the Knoxville Police Department announced just after 10 p.m. Oct. 11 that residents could return to the homes in the area.
Although bomb squad technicians had cleared the contents of the box and rendered the explosives safe, Western Avenue would remain closed between Tennessee and Texas avenues, a KPD post announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“I could not be prouder of the law enforcement community in Tennessee,” KPD Chief Paul Noel said during a 10 p.m. briefing near the area that had been evacuatd.
“They removed a large amount of dynamite by hand all day, today, in the hot sun, I cannot stress how dangerous that was,” Noel said. “They are absolute heroes.”
The investigation began after a 911 call around 2:15 p.m. Oct. 10 that alerted police to an unmarked, locked, approximately 5-foot-by-5-foot steel box filled with suspected explosive materials at CMC Recycling.
By the evening of Oct. 11, the Knoxville Police Department bomb squad had begun removing what appeared to be sticks of dynamite from the steel box that had been discovered and reported the previous afternoon, which had prompted the continued evacuation of the area.
The recycling facility at 2706 Mynderse Ave. purchases materials to salvage, KPD public information officer Scott Erland said, and it’s suspected the company bought the box and began opening it with a torch before identifying what was inside.
‘About 200 sticks of dynamite’:Transcript of 911 call that prompted Knoxville evacuation
Knoxville Police and Fire departments recommended residents and businesses evacuate the area around the recycling center that afternoon, a safety precaution that continued into Oct. 11.
Samples of the box’s contents tested positive for ammonium nitrate, “which is consistent with dynamite,” Erland said during a midday briefing Oct. 11.
KPD had assistance from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office and Metro Nashville Police Department in obtaining the samples using advanced equipment, including an explosive ordinance robot that removed the door of the box, Erland said.
The KPD bomb squad had begun removing explosive materials from the steel box at CMC Recycling late in the afternoon Oct. 11 after the explosives robot couldn’t remove the contents.
“One of the complications that we’re dealing with with this box is that there’s a high number of blast caps in the box in addition to the commercial grade explosives,” Erland said.
The blast caps were mixed in with the dynamite, which the robot couldn’t remove. Mixing blast caps with dynamite goes against Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives standards, according to Erland.
Although the 911 call reporting the box had referred to “‘about 200 sticks of dynamite,” police don’t have an exact count for how many sticks of dynamite or blast caps were in the box, Erland said.
Noel confirmed that the dynamite was soaked in diesel, placed into seven piles with straw and “incinerated” to dispose of it.
The dynamite was burned on site, and piles were still burning at 10 p.m., which prompted officials to keep a section of Western Avenue closed for a while longer, though Erland said he was confident it was safe for people to return to the area. The box was still on site, too, and had been deemed harmless.
“They did it manually, by hand, risking their lives to save the people of our city, and they didn’t get hurt,” Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said during the 10 p.m. briefing. “No one in the city got hurt, no property was damaged, and everyone can go home. We are so relieved.”
“This is something I’ve never experienced before. I was talking to one of the bomb techs behind me from Knox County,” Noel said. “They dealt with something similar, but in a rural area. This is something that’s certainly unprecedented.”
“Welcome home everybody who had to evacuate. Thank you for your patience, and our prayers have been answered,” Kincannon said.