By Ishita Srivastava For Dailymail.Com

Published: 21:30 BST, 30 April 2024 | Updated: 21:54 BST, 30 April 2024

Utah officials were forced to blow up a house in a controlled explosion after the homeowner found old dynamite. 

The Unified Fire Authority blew up a house in Holladay at 4 am on April 24 after the female owner found large amounts of old dynamite stashed in her deceased husband’s belongings. 

According to officials, the explosive material had been passed down from generation to generation before the elderly woman found it.

‘She knew it was dangerous, she didn’t know the extent but knew she needed help taking care of it,’ said Unified Fire Authority Assistant Chief Riley Pilgrim.

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The Assistant Chief believes that the dynamite was about 40 to 60 years old. Firefighters were able to find 25 sticks outside and eight in the basement near various chemicals.

The Unified Fire Authority blew up a house in Holladay at 4am today morning after the female owner found large amounts of old dynamite stashed in her deceased husband’s belongings

Footage from the moment of the detonation shows an official pressing a button on remote to activate the detonation 

The Assistant Chief believes that the dynamite was about 40 to 60 years old and firefighters were able to find twenty-five sticks outside and eight in the basement near various chemicals

According to officials, the explosive material had been passed down from generation to generation before the elderly woman found it

‘Because of the age and the crystallization and deterioration of the product it just became way too dangerous to handle even taking one stick out could’ve created a significant threat to our personnel,’ he said. 

As a result, approximately 450 homes were evacuated in Holladay before the blast.  

Footage from the moment of the detonation shows an official pressing a button on a remote to activate the detonation. 

In the span of seconds, the house can be seen exploding with debris flying into the air amid a ball of fire. 

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The video then shows a massive blaze erupting out of the remains of the property. 

In the span of seconds, the house can be seen exploding with debris flying into the air amid a ball of fire

The UFA that the homeowner’s irreplaceable belongings were removed before the detonation 

The Authority explained in an Instagram post: ‘In the field of fire and EMS we often must make difficult decisions to minimize the risks to human life. 

‘Due to the number of variables involved in each emergency, there is no one size fits all solution.

‘Our primary concern is always for the lives of the community we serve and the safety of any on scene personnel.

‘Before this controlled detonation, UFA worked closely with the homeowner to remove some of her irreplaceable belongings. 

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‘UFA worked very closely with UPD and the County Emergency Communications Center to evacuate the surrounding area. There were many other agencies that played a pivotal role in making this coordinated effort as safe as possible.’

According to Fox13, all residents barring one were soon able to to return to their homes.

WASHINGTON – The pro-Palestinian protest at George Washington University is showing no signs of letting up but has for the most part remained peaceful, unlike what’s been seen at other college campuses around the country.  

The block of H Street between 20th and 21st streets, NW, remained blocked off by D.C. police Tuesday. It’s part of the large tent city on the campus of GWU that seems to be entrenched, for now.

“The fact that this is allowed to keep occurring is absolutely ridiculous,” said GWU student Sabrina Soffer.

The encampment at GWU is now on its sixth day.  Pro-Palestinian students from universities around the D.C. region are leading the protest, causing more than concern for some students of the Jewish faith.

“It’s anti-Semitism,” Soffer told FOX 5. “The ideas have been thrifted but it has a shiny new fashionable outerwear and the fact that this is given the moral high ground — it’s exactly how it happened in Germany. In the Nazi era, anti-Semitism was intellectualized, it was moralized, it was legalized and then it was normalized and that’s what we’re seeing right now. There’s blatant anti-Semitism on our campus and it’s being normalized.”

 One of the student leaders of the protest is Jewish. She has a different take on the movement. 

“Personally, I feel more safe being Jewish in here in this encampment than I do outside this encampment and the reason for that is because everyone here believes in collective liberation of the safety of all people are intertwined with each other and I know that as a Jew I’m included in that,” GW student Miriam said. 

Over 80 arrested at Virginia Tech during Israel-Hamas war protests; Youngkin supports university

The dozens of tents occupy the entire university yard in the heart of GW’s campus in Foggy Bottom. Barricades that had surrounded the perimeter late last week are now piled in a heap.

“It’s important that we are still being disruptive to the University and disrupting business as usual because there cannot be business as usual during the genocide and we’re now up to 200 hundred days into a genocide and students are fed up,” Miriam said. 

But some of the recent protests on college campuses around the country have turned violent — Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond and Columbia University in New York among them.  

Students attending a nearby high school use the yard as a cut-through and are still doing so right now.

“I walk to Western Market for lunch every day and I just walk through. It is very peaceful. Everyone’s very quiet and I think it’s kind of cool for me to see the movements and stuff happening downtown in this space,” high schooler Kai Hardy-Kanegis said. 

There have been calls from some in Congress for D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and Police Chief Pamela Smith to clear the block of H Street that’s been claimed by the protestors and to assist GW in dismantling the encampment in its quad. But those calls appear to be falling on deaf ears.

“I’m upset. I’m outraged,” Soffer said. “I mean the fact that the mayor isn’t allowing the police to intervene is absolutely ridiculous and I feel like every step that needs to be taken to get police presence there right now to remove this needs to be done.”

CASPER, Wyo. (Wyoming News Now) – The Jefferson Awards honor those making a difference in communities across the state. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introduced to Wyoming’s nominees.

Mary Longart-Parkinson moved to Casper about ten years ago from Venezuela, and now works as a life insurance agent at New York Life.

Mary is a busy lady, but one thing she always makes time for is helping others. She’s a driver for Meals On Wheels, coaches immigrants to help them better understand the citizenship process, and works with a number of other non-profits.

Whoever it is, she wants to make the folks she works with feel valued.

She explains, “I do it because I really enjoy bringing hope to people. Whether [it’s] someone bringing you food, or ‘I matter because she’s taking the time to explain things to me like no one else did before’, that’s what I like.”

Mary says it’s these interactions that keep her going, “It just lights up my day, I don’t want to stop doing it.”

Though she’s honored to have been nominated for a Jefferson Award, she never expected to be recognized for her work. She simply hopes to inspire others to follow in her footsteps and become more involved within their communities.

She says, “Being kind to other people, it’s definitely a winner all the time.”

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