The Azusa Police Department evacuated houses in a residential neighborhood Monday afternoon after authorities discovered a large amount of illegal fireworks at a home.
Officers began evacuating homes on the 900 block of West Hollyvale Street around 3:20 p.m., according to the Police Department.
Investigators from the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office and the Los Angeles County Fire Department had been serving a search warrant at the home when they discovered the large cache of explosives.
Azusa police assumed the investigation with assistance from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad.
Authorities confiscated more than 1,800 pounds of illegal fireworks from a van parked at the home. More than 1,700 pounds of explosives were found in a storage unit in a remote part of the county earlier in the day.
Additionally, equipment used for making explosives were also found inside the home.
The LASD bomb squad planned to move the fireworks to a safe location for detonation.
Residents were told they would need to evacuate and could not return home for several hours, Azusa police said. A cooling center at Memorial Park, which is about 2.5 miles away from the neighborhood, remained open for any residents who were evacuated.
By 10:20 p.m., all residents were allowed to return home, Azusa police said in a Facebook post. In total, 27 homes were evacuated.
Police took one person into custody at the scene in connection with the illegal fireworks. It’s unclear at this time if the person lived at the home where the fireworks were found.
