Police detonate Cedar Falls pipe bomb

UPDATE: A pipe bomb discovered in a Cedar Falls neighborhood was detonated by a bomb squad without incident Tuesday afternoon.

A robot from the Waterloo Police Department bomb squad picked up the bomb from a yard in the 2300 block of Royal Drive Tuesday afternoon and transported it across the street to another yard where sandbags had been set up to safely detonate the device.

Residents of the neighborhood had been evacuated in the morning and children at the nearby Community United Child Care on Seerley Boulevard were locked in the building during the event.

Some parents came to pick up their children after the center alerted them about the situation.

Cedar Falls Police Chief Jeff Olson said the pipe bomb was found by Cedar Falls Public Works employees who were working to clear storm drains. They located the bomb underground in a storm drain and removed it, then realized it was potentially dangerous and alerted police after 8 a.m.

The bomb appeared to be PVC pipe with tape on the ends, but Olson said it also had metal components.

"It was wet, but it was clean. It's hard to determine how long it had been down there," Olson said of the device.

George Pfalzgraf, who lives across the street from where the device was found, was on a teleconference in his home when the neighborhood was evacuated.

He said at first he didn't take it seriously, but after being evacuated for more than three hours, he praised the police for being cautious.

"Police have to be right 100 percent of the time on these kinds of things," Pfalzgraf said.

See more information from the Waterl0o-Cedar Falls Courier

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