They are busy cleaning up after that horrible fire the other day in the Borough of West Chester
Tag Archives: fire
about 60 pipe bombs? in public storage in malvern?
Last night a headline broke on Malvern Patch:
Actual photo taken inside Public Storage in Malvern months ago
That really freaked me out because until a couple of months ago, I was a customer of that Public Storage – I had needed some extra storage when I first relocated permanently to Chester County. It was clean and easy to get to and not creepy feeling the way a lot of those self storage places are. The few months I was there we rarely saw other people, and given all the shows on television and cable about storage units (Storage Wars) and auctioning off abandoned storage units, you can’t help but wonder what people store there.
While a customer there I saw mostly people who were storing clothes and books and stuff like me and once in a while people who were antiques and collectibles dealers who didn’t have store fronts, and did shows. Occasionally you would see an orphaned piece of furniture or a lamp no one wanted left inside the front doors by the elevators, but that was it.
So I was floored when I saw Malvern Patch’s headline last night about the sleepy yet clean Public Storage and I am equally shocked this morning that yes, the bomb squad borrowed from Montgomery County (apparently Chester County doesn’t have one?) detonated BOMBS last night! Sweet Jesus! How long were they in the storage facility? The risk to the public with this if not for law enforcement could have been crazy.
This also makes you think about all the other self storage facilities around here on and off that Route 30 corridor, doesn’t it? Remember that developer of Malvern (who isn’t getting the Whip Tavern is also bringing more self storage to Malvern called “Cube Smart”.)
So how do these self storage companies really know what is being stored?
Mr. Bomb Storage in the news broken by Malvern Patch (EXCELLENT job by the way in getting that out there) ends up is a Ponzi schemer named “Istvan Merchanthaler, a 42-year-old man facing federal charges related to a $2 million Ponzi scheme.”
And Patch reports that there was a lot of law enforcement there last night. Given what it was about, I have no doubt in my mind ATF was there too.
I hope they throw another book at this freak Istvan Merchanthaler for those explosive devices.
Here is the updated story from Patch (Malvern Patch really does do local news well as opposed to a lot of other Patch sites), and from Michael Price at The Daily Local:
Bombs Detonated in Park After Storage-Unit Seizure
By Pete Kennedy and Eric Campbell Email the authors March 7, 2013
Two bomb-disposal units were among the multiple emergency response teams working at the Public Storage facility in Frazer Thursday evening after a large amount of explosives was found inside a storage locker.
FBI agents and bomb technicians worked in and around the building, located on the unit block of Lancaster Avenue, as local police and fire departments controlled traffic, maintained a perimeter and kept ready to respond to any incidents.
Around 8:30 p.m., bomb squads from Montgomery County and Philadelphia began hauling the explosives from the storage facility to nearby Valley Creek Park. The explosives were transported inside large metal containers on trailers, and each trip involved a convoy of fire engines, ambulances and police vehicles…..
Shortly after 11:15 p.m., as a light snow fell, the first in a series of explosions shook houses and woke sleeping residents miles away. At least five explosions occurred before they stopped around 1:15 a.m. Friday.
There were also reports of an explosion earlier in the day, around 7 p.m., but employees at businesses near Public Storage said they did not hear anything at that time.
The FBI had notified East Whiteland Police that they planned to execute a warrant within the township, but the circumstances that led the agency to Malvern are unclear. The Daily Local News reports that the storage locker was registered to Istvan Merchanthaler, a 42-year-old man facing federal charges related to a $2 million Ponzi scheme. Harman said agents told him a Maryland resident had been arrested in connection with the bombs.
Federal agents remove explosives from Malvern storage locker
By MICHAEL N. PRICE mprice@dailylocal.com
Posted: Thursday, 03/07/13 10:35 pm Updated: Thursday, 03/07/13 10:43 pm
EAST WHITELAND — Federal agents and bomb squad units removed a high amount of explosives from a storage locker Thursday night in the unit block of Lancaster Avenue in Malvern.
According to a high ranking official close to the investigation, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and members of the Montgomery County and Philadelphia bomb squads removed about 60 pipe bombs from a storage locker at Malvern Public Storage and transported them to a nearby park, where they were to be detonated.
The source, who asked to remain anonymous due to the ongoing and sensitive nature of the investigation, said that the storage locker was registered to 42-year-old Istvan Merchanthaler, a Chester County man facing federal charges in connection to a Ponzi scheme that officials say defrauded investors of about $2 million over the past seven years. Officials close to Merchanthaler’s case said the suspect was connected to similar explosive investigations in other states, and added that he is facing charges in multiple jurisdictions throughout the east coast….The United States Attorney’s Office announced additional fraud charges against Merchanthaler Thursday
Ponzi schemes are bad enough without adding BOMBS to the mix. So what was the goal here? Defraud some people and blow some others up? Wow. Nice guy this Istvan Merchanthaler, right?
up in smoke: historic bloomfield in villanova burns
I believe I was in 9th or 10th grade the last time there was a fire at the historic Radnor Township mansion known as Bloomfield. Bloomfield was built at the turn of the 20th century in the Radnor Township portion of Villanova on the bones of a Victorian Estate built for Albert Eugene Gallatin in the 1880’s. Bloomfield was built by Horace Trumbauer and her gardens were designed by the Olmstead brothers.
This place in my opinion was like Radnor’s La Ronda and it was a marvel it had 
survived this long without being torn down or bastardized. It looked like a French Chateau with fabulous gardens and a graceful, grand presence. It was being rented by a Canadian family at the time of the fire – which began mid-afternoon yesterday.
I went today to the site and when I got out of my car there were some news vans at the estate entrance on S. Ithan and the air smelled heavily of smoke. As I went to take my photos I also glanced up the street shows the gaping, ravaged land where private school Agnes Irwin had been reportedly blasting this week.
There were many gapers and gawkers on the driveway and the road when I arrived 
and I wandered around with a local reporter from Radnor Patch (Sam Strike) taking photos. We got up the driveway to in front of the fencing now surrounding the site where we were met by a Radnor police officer who was none too happy to see us and asked us to leave. He also threatened to take my camera. He was just doing his job.
So we left, and we got some good photos, and as we wandered back down the driveway, there were yet more gawkers, so I would not be surprised if they did not soon post a police car at the foot of the driveway.
People are driving up and down S. Ithan hoping for a glance of the scene, and I found others back around Trianon Lane, where you can see glimpses of the gardens, house, and pool from behind wrought iron fencing.
NBC10 is reporting that investigators are trying to find a cause. The state police fire investigator is now reported to be in charge of the investigation. I was told that around 175 volunteer fire fighters responded from several companies from all over the area to fight this fire. (This as a related aside is why everyone should support their local first responders and on the Main Line and in Chester County they are a predominantly volunteer force.) First responders came from Radnor, Bryn Mawr, Ardmore, Gladwyne, Penn Wynne, King Of Prussia, Manoa and Newtown Square.
They say the slate roof made it hard for firefighters to break into the roof and battle the fire. I am also told some firefighters may have suffered some issues due to the heat, etc of the fire. God bless them for what they did, because truthfully, I know many people near the mansion who had fears of the fire jumping via the trees surrounding the property. With wind and fire, you just never know how it will travel.
The mansion was most recently owned by Jerald Batoff, son of a former Democratic fundraiser heavyweight, William “Bill” Batoff. I looked at Delaware 
County property records yesterday and Batoff had only owned it a few years. I am told by neighbors that although it had renters, the mansion had been for sale. Apparently a movie soon to be released called “Safe” was partially filmed there in 2010 – the mansion was a film double for New York City’s Gracie Mansion.
I think this is an incredibly sad loss if this mansion ends up not being rebuilt (I am sure residents will now be nervous that the mansion will be razed and the land sold for some sort of development because that would be a natural thought process after a fire of such devastation), and it is but for the grace of God that people weren’t killed because of this fire.
Here’s the coverage:
When fire tore through the mansion named Bloomfield on South Ithan Avenue on Wednesday, it not only repeated history, but also destroyed it.