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NANTICOKE - A man called 911 Thursday after finding more than 200 blasting caps with wires attached to them in the attic of his two-story home at 238 W. Main St., Nanticoke.

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West Main street in Nanticoke needed to be shut down for a period of time while a bomb squad removed blasting caps discovered in a home.

Aimee Dilger

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238-240 W. Main Street home in Nanticoke where blasting caps were found and needed to be removed.

Aimee Dilger

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Firefighters, police and emergency crews responded to the home around 3:30 p.m., said Nanticoke police Detective Capt. William Shultz.

Neighboring homes were temporarily evacuated while the blasting caps were removed, he said. County Emergency Management Agency Director Stephen Bekanich said the explosives were equivalent to about 10 sticks of dynamite.

He said it is not unusual to find blasting caps in older homes. Coal miners would often take the explosives home from work and store them in attics, he said.

Scranton Police Department’s Bomb Squad responded shortly later to render safe the explosives.