This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Tooele County farmer's children were taken aback when they found his stash: a whole bunch of dynamite.
The children were clearing their father's Erda home Wednesday afternoon, in anticipation of eventually selling the Bates Canyon Road property, when they found 86 sticks of dynamite in storage.
The sticks, which were near their blast and detonation caps, were sweating nitroglycerin — "dynamite's worst state," said Ryan Willden, spokesman for the North Tooele County Fire District.
"It was really a recipe for disaster," Willden said. "… They had one of those moments where you kind of freak out, and rightly so."
They called the fire district, whch in turn called Unified Fire Authority's ordinance disposal team. While firefighters evacuated nearby homes and blocked the road, as a precaution, the disposal team spent several hours "very methodically" neutralizing the dynamite and burning the sticks in a nearby field — without any detonations.
The farmer had used the dynamite to blast ditches, boulders and tree stumps, a common practice for farmers.
"He probably forgot that he even had them," Willden said.
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