PORT ANGELES — A half-dozen households along Ennis Creek were evacuated voluntarily Tuesday night after investigators found a cache of dynamite in a house and two outbuildings at 2025 E. Keller Drive.
Clallam County Sheriff’s deputies summoned a Washington State Patrol interagency bomb disposal squad to remove the explosives.
In addition to state troopers, the squad included Kitsap County Sheriff’s deputies and Bremerton police officers and a bomb-sniffing dog.
Also at the scene was an agent from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms office in Seattle and firefighters from Fire District 2 Gales station.
One neighbor who evacuated her home told officers she would stay with her mother. Where other residents spent the night was not known.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Nick Turner said investigators, acting on a tip, served a search warrant on the home, discovered the dynamite and took a man and woman into custody.
Matthew Borden, 42, and Linda Borden, 47, were booked into the Clallam County jail for illegal possession of explosives, a state offense.
Turner said officers had worked on the case starting at about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday.
He said the couple who were arrested were thought to have been served with an eviction notice recently.
The property owner consented to the search, he said.
Turner said the dynamite may have been stolen in 2002 from a Forks location. Fifty pounds of the explosive was taken in that theft.
As of 10 p.m. Tuesday, 3 pounds of dynamite had been recovered from the Keller Drive buildings.