House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part II

Note: Please read House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part I before proceeding with this chapter. You'll enjoy the story a lot more that way. Thanks for visiting!

When last you left the intrepid incompetents (that's me and Michael, by the way), we had just stumbled upon some interesting old bottles and one very interesting pretty little blue one. What we did not know at the time was this: the contents of the little blue bottle marked "Picric Acid" was actually what some would call a "trigger." If that trigger had been pulled I would not be telling you this story.

What scares me even today to think about is how close we came to accidentally "pulling that trigger." In the previous post a quotation briefly described that the stuff was "shock sensitive" and that dropping something into it would produce a blast more forceful than TNT. This means, my dear readers, that dropping IT -- that pretty blue bottle -- would produce that same blast.

This explosive, it would seem, was meant as the trigger to ignite or combust all of the other chemicals we found in the house. Here's a brief listing of some of the others: Ammonium Nitrate, Sodium Nitrate, Potassium Hydroxide. . . Sorry, I've got to stop. I'm getting a little woozy.

Crazy, silly, stupid, ignorant, me decided (at first) that all of these things were really little more than a nuisance. They were in our way and would prevent us from getting work underway immediately. Therefore, I made the executive decision that all of the various bottles throughout the house should be brought together in the garage and placed in the nifty little wooden box sitting there with six or eight others inside it. Great idea, right?

Wrong, Brad! Bad Brad. Bad. Very, very bad. Ignorant me had just assembled all of the bomb-making materials into one nifty little package -- one convenient location as they say.

I was still in the land of the innocent and naive thinking that this was nothing. I was still thinking about all those people who had seen these same things and done nothing. I was still unaware that God, or fate, or some higher power had decided that Michael and I were to take care of this. Finally, I was still unaware that sometimes someone has to give a shit and that someone was Michael and me.

In the legal world there is a legal term of art known as the "Dead Hand," or, sometimes, the "Mortmain." Translated, it is the hand reaching from the grave to control various property interests in the present and future. There are Dead Hand Statutes and long old lines of court cases against control by the Dead Hand. But did they stop this Dead Hand? Not for an instant.

Because the moment I touched the little blue bottle and gathered all of its exciting, strange-named friends together in the garage, I was under the control of a dead hand. The person who had brought these things to this house was long dead. To be sure, he could never again assemble them as I had just done. But when an ignorant house flipper trying to tidy up came along -- yes, that's me -- the dead hand reached from the grave and a bomb was one step closer to being born.

Evil was afoot. All that dead hand had to do now was to get someone to pull the trigger. Was that going to be me?

Here's the spooky part: the Dead Hand tried its best that day. After picking up the blue bottle once and setting it back into the box, I gathered all of the other bottles together and went about my business. Several times after that -- I mean at least three, if not four times after that -- I went back to that box trying to figure out what I was supposed to do with it. Each time I went back I picked up that little blue bottle and tried to process what it meant. "Explosive When Dry. . . Do Not Touch to Metal" What did this mean. What was I supposed to do with this?

Luckily, I'm not completely ignorant. And, luckily, I care about the environment. You see, if I had thought that these were nothing more than household chemicals or something inert or harmless, I would have gleefully tossed the entire wooden box, bottles and all, into the large blue-green trash can provided by the City of Albuquerque for regular pickup on Wednesday mornings. If it didn't blow up the instant I tossed it into that container, it almost certainly would have gone "Boom" when it was compacted in the back of the City's trash truck. If not then, it would have done so at the landfill where the 20-ton compactor on wheels got to work.

I also believe that all the aforementioned people -- dozens of them -- who had been in that house before us had known that these bottles were dangerous and had simply told themselves it wasn't their job or their responsibility. They knew that they couldn't throw these things in the trash either or they would have done so. They were lazy, or irresponsible, or incompetent, or afraid. They did nothing because they hoped that eventually someone else would. They obviously had no thought or care for the consequences of a simple accident involving these bottles. It's a shame, really. And it's a damned good thing that I'm able to tell you this story today.

So, I found a phone book. I looked up listings in the Yellow Pages for "Hazardous Waste Disposal" and "Environmental Waste." I found a few companies and started calling them on my cell phone. Turns out that none of them are actually based here in Albuquerque. They all have answering services who will only contact someone immediately if it's an emergency. I said it was, and after about a half dozen calls and about an hour of waiting, someone finally called me back.

"Bill" wasn't his name, but it'll work for now. He was on his cell phone, standing at the Albuquerque Sunport waiting for a plane to Denver where his office actually is. "I understand you have an emergency of some sort. Tell me what you've got," he said calmly.

"I don't know for sure what I've got, Bill. All I know is that I probably shouldn't throw this stuff in the trash. I mean, one of them has a funny sounding name -- Picric Acid, I think. . . "

An audible gasp comes through the airwaves. "What? Where are you?"

"I'm at a house. . ."

"A HOUSE?" he practically screams. "What house? Here in Albuquerque?"

"Yes, we're getting ready to start renovations and today's our first day here. We found a little bottle marked Picric Acid and some others like Ammonium Nitrate and stuff I can't remember off the top of my head. Is this something you guys can properly dispose of?"

His words are rushed now. "Well, yeah, but I'm trying to figure out what it's doing in a house. I mean, that's some pretty nasty stuff there, Brad. Have you handled it? I mean, have you touched it? Did you open it? Is there something in that bottle?"

"I don't know if there's anything in it. I can't see through the blue glass. . . "

"Glass, good! Does it have a metal lid?"

"Don't know."

"Look. . ." There was a long pause. "I'm at the airport getting ready to fly home. Why don't you put together a list of all the stuff you got there and fax it to me. Here's my number. . . OK, when I get to Denver, I'll go to my office tonight and look at the list. Can I reach you at this number later tonight?"

"Yes."

"Okay. Fax me that list and I'll call you later."

"I was wondering, is this something your company usually handles? I mean, should I call someone else, and if so, who?"

"No, no. You don't need to call anyone else. We can do this. You haven't called the fire department or the city or anyone like that have you?"

"No, you're the first person I've talked to."

"Good. Don't call the City. You'll have a major mess on your hands if you do."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, Bill. You're the expert. I'll fax you that list right away. Talk to you later."

We hung up. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew," I told Michael. "Looks like this guy can take care of this stuff. Although he did ask some funny questions. I wonder why he was worried about whether we had handled it? He also said don't call the City."

So, I went BACK into the garage and picked up each bottle AGAIN and read off the names and spellings of each chemical as Michael wrote them down on a sheet of paper. I set each one back down AGAIN. As I look back now, I realize that The Dead Hand was working furiously now. It was trying it's damnedest to trigger that bomb.

But it didn't happen. Thank God! Not then, at least. Not in my presence.

Unfortunately, "Bill" never called me back that night. Nor did he call me the next day. Three days later, in fact, I finally heard from Bill, but by then it was too late. God, Fate, the Higher Power, intervened. You see, we didn't wait for Bill. When he didn't call back as promised, we didn't sit on our hands. I called his number, got the answering service and got no return call.

I remembered that audible gasp of his. I remembered his strange questions and his "instructions" not to call the fire department. I knew that something BIG was wrong and I knew we couldn't wait. We weren't going to wait. That's not who we are.


Tune in next time for the conclusion.

House Flipping Files, It's the Bomb, Part I

"House Flipping Is Fun," the billboard should read. It's fun, it's hip, it's cool and for the last few years it's been one of the "in" things to do. It's high risk and often high reward. It's an entrepreneurs dream to find that diamond in the rough and polish it to a brilliance that no one can resist. There are lots of TV shows about flipping houses on cable these days. For example, there's Bravo's "Flipping Out", A&E's "Flip This House", Discovery/TLC Channel's "Flip That House, and others.

Until last April, the only risk I ever imagined associated with flipping houses was financial. You know, the house can't be turned around, it stays a dump and you lose money. Or, the market goes south and you can't sell it. It's a huge risk when credit markets are tight and housing sales are flat. But, the major payoffs come when the renovations happen right, the lenders are lending, and the buyers are snapping everything up at higher and higher prices every day.

As I said, that was what I thought until last April. Seems there was something I hadn't really thought about when it comes to flipping houses -- explosives! Yes, that's what I said, explosives!

Before I get too far into this tragi-comedy, I'll have to explain a couple of things. First, houses are easier to flip for a profit when their initial purchase price is below market value for the neighborhood. Let's face it, if a house sells substantially below market value, there's something wrong with it. Almost always, this means that there's something physically wrong, like a leaky roof that caused damage inside the house.

Joe and Mary Sixpack simply don't want to buy a house that they can't move into right away. House flippers do the dirty work -- fix it up into "new" condition -- and sell it to Joe and Mary Sixpack. The flippers deal with all the contractors and pay all the bills while the repairs are being done. Joe and Mary get their new house with no strings so they can happily raise their 1.7 kids and drive their 2.4 cars.

So, almost always the problem with the house -- the reason it's a great house to flip -- is the physical condition. But, sometimes the house may be in OK shape, but something else is wrong: there's no clear title. No one will lend money on them because they're in the no-man's land of legal paperwork. Joe and Mary Sixpack want to move in ASAP, not a day later.

It's this second, title-trouble house that we were "lucky" enough to flip with some friends starting last April. It had been tied up in probate for some time and the court would not release it for sale until all the legal "i's" were dotted and "t's" were crossed. It was finally released, the sale closed and we happily entered sometime after the first of the month.

NOTE: for many months the house was in probate, it was legally in the possession of a Probate Court in Bernalillo County, New Mexico. This means that the Court appointed someone to take care of the house - you know, pay the bills, mow the yard, clean it, make sure it wasn't falling down. I am confident that a court-appointed caretaker was paid to make monthly visits to the property and to report back to the Court about it's condition.

Before we ever stepped foot in this house, I would estimate that dozens of people had been through it not only performing caretaker duties, but inspecting it, appraising it, showing the house, or seeking to buy the house. So why, why, WHY on God's green Earth did I walk into the house after all this time and all these people had passed through it and find bomb-making materials laying around in plain sight?

It's a shame, really. The tragic part of the story is that the previous owners had both died while they were in the midst of a divorce (thus the need for probate). I'll spare you all the gory details, but it is now clear that not only had all the aforementioned people been through the house, but the Albuquerque Police Department, Fire Department and Bernalillo County Coroner had been in the house at least once after one of the owners passed away there.

So, again, I ask you: Why, why, WHY were there explosives in plain sight sitting around on the floors of several rooms and the garage? Had NONE of these people seen what I saw within a few minutes of my arrival? Had NONE of these people wondered why clearly marked bottles of bomb-making materials were in the bedroom, dining room, kitchen and arage? What the. . .? I mean, really, folks.

On a beautiful spring day in April of this year, Michael and I walked into the house and began making a list of repairs and likely contractors to use for those repairs. There were some papers lying around in the bedrooms, a couple of pieces of useless broken furniture here and there, and some bottles of chemicals clearly indicating that something was terribly wrong.

But we didn't really "see" the bottles right away. They were interesting diversions as we walked from room to room making our checklists. We were curious about them, but they didn't attract our undivided attention. They looked "cool" and we figured that the previous owner had been into collecting old bottles. As we gathered junk up to throw away, we found some old paperwork indicating that one of the owners had been a professor in the Pharmacy Department at the University of New Mexico Hospital here in Albuquerque.

"Oh," I said to Michael, "this guy was a pharmacy professor. He must have been into all these old bottles as mementos or something."

Michael nodded, agreeing to point. "Then what are these powders and liquids inside of these bottles? I hope they're not the chemicals listed on the labels."

"Hm, don't know. We probably shouldn't open them or anything just in case. We can just gather them all up, figure out what we got."

"I saw a box of more bottles out in the garage," Michael said.

"Let's check it out."

Life had been a happy, exhilarating, "New Day" kind of thing that day. It had been filled with the promise of a new house flipping project and great profits ahead. The day was perfect.

Perfect, that is, until we got to the garage and found a wooden box with no lid. Inside the box were six large brown bottles and one little translucent blue bottle. It was pretty, this little blue gem. It was the only one with handwriting on it. The letters spelled out: "Picric Acid -- Explosive When Dry" and "Do Not Touch to Metal."

Google this: Picric Acid. In the top five choices you will find the following link: www.tc.gc.ca/canutec/en/articles/documents/picric.htm. In the document behind that link you will find the following statement:

"Picric acid or Trinitrophenol is, by far, one of the more dangerous chemicals being used today. Classified as a flammable solid when wetted with more than 30% water (UN1344, class 4.1) and a class A high explosive with less than 30% water (UN0154, class 1.1D), it has some very interesting properties. It is explosive but also highly shock, heat and friction sensitive. In fact, detonation with a speed and power superior to that of TNTcan occur by a 2 kg weight falling onto solid picric acid from a height of 36 cm. Picric acid is toxic by all routes of entry, it’s also a skin irritant and allergen and will produce toxic pro-ducts on decomposition."

You have the benefit of this knowledge now. At the time we found the pretty blue bottle, we knew nothing about it. I have to admit that at the moment I found the bottle and for a few moments thereafter I was still living in the happy land of ignorant bliss, unable to believe for even an instant that someone would have a dozen bottles of bomb-making materials in their house. It just didn't register in my brain that the handwritten words I was reading was real or that it had any meaning in my world.

I really thought at this point, folks, that the previous homeowner, being a pharmacy professor, had known these things weren't dangerous and had brought them to his house as part of a collection of some sort -- a trophy case, if you will. I had also figured out by this point that many, many people had been in this house as part of their jobs before me and they must have seen the same things that I was seeing. None of them had become alarmed, right?

It took a while for it to sink in: I wasn't going to be able to do what dozens and dozens of people before me had done. I wasn't going to be able to ignore these bottles. Shit! I was going to have to take charge and do the right thing, wasn't I? Wasn't I?

The only problem was, I didn't know what the right thing was. What do you do with someone else's bomb-making materials? Who do you call? Where do you start?

We're out of time for today, but tune in next time to discover the answer to these and other burning questions like: "What do robots do for a living, Brad?" and how do you answer a cop who asks you "What the hell is going on down there?" when you honestly don't have a clue what the hell's going on down there?