Update (10:07 p.m.): KPD has given residents the all clear to return home, saying they have successfully removed all of the dynamite from the box and rendered it safe.
Nearly 2,000 residents of the Lonsdale community near Western Avenue were evacuated from their homes for nearly 30 hours across Thursday and Friday following an emergency response to hazardous dynamite uncovered at CMC Recycling.
The Knoxville Police Department and Knoxville Fire Department responded to a call at 2:15 p.m. Thursday reporting potentially hazardous explosive materials at CMC Recycling near the intersection of Western and Mynderse avenues.
According to the 911 call, workers at the CMC Recycling plant on Mynderse Avenue were attempting to torch open a steel box that had been on site for several days, when smoke erupted and they caught a glimpse of a large quantity of dynamite.
After KPD and KFD responded and determined the situation to be potentially dangerous, residents and businesses in a 3,000 foot radius were sent an alert to evacuate at roughly 4:00 p.m. on Thursday.
On Friday afternoon, the bomb squad began pulling sticks of dynamite from the steel box with a robotic drone.
KPD Information Officer Scott Erland said that they discovered blast caps, which actually detonate dynamite, mixed in with the explosives on Friday afternoon. To ensure that a detonation did not occur, they started removing the materials carefully by hand.
"Our bomb squad technicians are going in by hand, carefully and diligently removing the pieces of the explosives," Erland said. "Obviously not the preferred or expected method, but that’s the method that we have available to us based on the situation.”
The city had opened up the Jacob Building in Chilhowee Park as an emergency shelter for residents who have been displaced, and the Red Cross provided supplies for those in need.
Erland had previously said they have no definitive timeline on when residents would be able to return to their homes, but that he expected it could be late Friday night or even early Saturday morning. KPD announced that the evacuation order had been lifted at 9:59 p.m. on Friday.
Western Avenue remains closed between Keith Avenue and Sanderson Road as emergency crews continue to wrap up their response.
This is a developing story that will continue to be updated as new information emerges. Last updated: 10:18 p.m., Oct. 11, 2024.
A previous version of this story said that there were 200 sticks of dynamite in the steel box. While this was reported by authorities earlier on Friday, they have since said that it has not been verified how much dynamite is in the box.
WUOT News reporter Jon Knowles contributed to this story.
