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California 'Bomb Factory' Burns Down

Update at 7:25 p.m. ET. In the end, it went off .

As The Associated Press reports: "There were no big explosions. No flames leaping from house to house. Just residents, watching anxiously as a house packed with explosives in their neighborhood went up in flames."

The Escondido, Calif., "bomb factory" is burning.

There's a live video stream here.

Regular readers will recall this is the rental home where police found what they say is the largest cache of homemade bombs and related materials ever discovered in the U.S.

And for a couple weeks now, they've been preparing to burn it down -- because experts said it was too dangerous to go inside and try to remove the stuff.

The neighborhood's been evacuated. The neighboring Interstate-15 has been closed. The San Diego Union-Tribune says that so far, "no explosions have been heard."

Still not known: what the home's resident -- George Jakubec -- was allegedly up to. He's under arrest.

Update at 2:39  p.m. ET. Here's the first "raw video" from the AP:

Update at 2:36 p.m. ET: "The biggest part of the show is probably over," San Diego Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Jan Caldwell just told reporters -- another sign that things have gone as planned and the fire is being confined to the "bomb factory."

Update at 2:34 p.m. ET. Here's one of the first photos from the scene:

Update at 2:30 p.m. ET: Jan Caldwell, spokeswoman for the San Diego Sheriff's Department, just said on ABC-10 in San Diego that everything has gone as planned so far, that some of the "popping" heard at the scene could be hand grenades and ammunition that were in the building, and that the fire is likely to smolder for many more hours.

Authorities expect, Caldwell added, that neighbors will be able to return to their homes this evening. Not all of them, by the way, chose to evacuate -- doing so was not mandatory.

Update at 2:22 p.m. ET: Still "so far so good" judging from the TV feeds.

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Mark Memmott is NPR's supervising senior editor for Standards & Practices. In that role, he's a resource for NPR's journalists – helping them raise the right questions as they do their work and uphold the organization's standards.