“When he was 15, he was making his own nitroglycerine,” he said. “This guy liked to blow stuff up.”

WHEN THE ANCHORAGE, ALASKA, FAMILY MEMBERS OF THE LATE CLAY HOLZL were going through one of his self-storage bins Friday, they came across a suprise. Way in the back was a big box filled with sky rockets that the pyrotechnician had stored away. Not the kind of rockets that you drive over the state line to buy, but those big hunkers that are used for public aerial displays.

So they went to the manager of the storage business, who was most unhappy to learn about the cache of explosives tucked away in his compound, and asked him what to do. His wife called the owner of Gorilla Fireworks, Robert Hall and told him what they had. Hall was familiar with Holzl and related that Holzl liked to “juice up” his fireworks to get bigger bangs out of them. But when given a description of the box of rockets, he estimated that they were at least 10 years old. Much to old to be handled safely, let alone lit off. His advice as to “play it by the book.”

That meant calling the fire department. They in turn brought in the State Police who also brought the ATF and some Army specialists. And everybody was in their funny suits. Putting their heads together, the agencies decided the best thing to do was blow the fireworks up. The best way to do that, they concluded, was to use C-4 plastic explosives. Around 30 pounds, according to Lt. Col. Jonathan Allen, an Army spokesman. Then they started shutting down the roads and alerting the neighbors.

“They were telling us, ‘You need to evacuate,’ and we were like, ‘Where do you want us to go?’ and they were like, ‘Go home,’ and we were like, ‘We live here,’ ”

The Kaboom experts then took the parcel of rockets over to a swampy area down the road and loaded them up with the C-4. Moments later windows were breaking, sleeping people were waking, and the phone calls started pouring in to the emergency dispatchers and news services.

KTUU-TV

Hall, the Gorilla Fireworks man, suspected the explosives experts might have taken a little pleasure in the whole thing, which is something he didn’t hold against them. “They had their own little blaze of glory. Holzl’s family was kind of laughing,” Hall said. “The last memory they’ll have of Clay is a big boom.”

The Anchorage Daily News carried the STORY.

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