From Niesha Lofing:
Yolo County law enforcement and fire personnel are gathering potentially explosive and hazardous material today from a Davis storage unit.
The former owner of the property in the unit, who had been renting the space from Central Davis Storage on Pole Line Road, contacted Davis police after learning that the property had been sold to a new owner, said police Sgt. Scott Smith.
The former owner had failed to pay the rent, and the property was sold at auction.
"The original owner said there's all these things in there that could potentially be bad news," he said.
The owner had been storing property, including a large collection of Vietnam-era equipment, military flares and what could possibly be a grenade, for more than 20 years, Smith said.
"Our take on it is the stuff in there, in the right hands, is totally OK," he said, later adding the "concern being that the new buyer won't know a lot of the intricacies of the chemicals."
Police, firefighters, the Yolo County bomb squad and the Yolo County Department of Environmental Health began working to inventory and seize the property at 7:30 a.m. today and likely will be on scene until about 5 p.m.
The collection has not triggered evacuations of nearby businesses.
"We have full decontamination areas and the fire department is on standby," Smith said. "We're very confident that even if there was a problem, it would be very well contained."
Police do not think the former owner had an underlying motive for storing the items at the facility.
"We don't' think he's a terrorist or anything," Smith said.
About Comments
Reader comments on Sacbee.com are the opinions of the writer, not The Sacramento Bee. If you see an objectionable comment, click the "report abuse" button below it. We will delete comments containing inappropriate links, obscenities, hate speech, and personal attacks. Flagrant or repeat violators will be banned. See more about comments here.