Beach Is Evacuated After Pipe Bomb Is Found

A 600-yard stretch of city beach was evacuated for four hours Thursday while the Orange County sheriff’s bomb squad disarmed a pipe bomb that a beachcomber had found buried in the sand.

The incident began about 10 a.m. when the unidentified man told lifeguards he had discovered the bomb using a metal detector near tower 14 at about 16th Street, a spokesman for the Huntington Beach Police Department said. After closing the beach, members of the bomb squad were able to disarm it, the spokesman said.

A search of the area rendered no more dangerous devices, he said. There were no arrests, and police offered no theories regarding how the bomb came to be there.