COEUR d'ALENE - The discovery of roughly 30 aged explosives in a Coeur d'Alene home prompted police to close two streets Monday morning and call in a bomb squad.

"We're going to err on the side of caution and keep people away from that," said Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Wayne Longo. "Anytime anything's that old, you have that fear (of explosion)."

A maintenance worker at 616 W. Davidson Ave., a rental property that is currently uninhabited, called the police after discovering the explosives in a metal can while cleaning the garage, said Coeur d'Alene police officer Eric Johnson.

"We don't know how long they've been there," Johnson said, adding that it is unknown whether the explosives belonged to the last tenants or were there even longer.

A bomb expert with the Coeur d'Alene police identified the explosives as railroad torpedoes, or small dynamite charges used to signal trains.

One or two wouldn't have been so alarming, Longo said. But 30 together could create an explosion large enough to injure a person walking by, which is likely in such a dense commercial and residential area.

"They (the explosives) were very, very old and starting to leach, which is very concerning," he said. "If they were to go off, it would have been quite an explosion."

The Coeur d'Alene police closed the streets near the residence, and the Spokane Bomb Squad arrived early in the afternoon and retrieved the explosives.

"It was just the safe and right thing to do," Longo said.

The squad detonated the explosives in the gravel pit near Ramsey Road and Golf Course Road.

There won't be a follow-up investigation to find the owners of the explosives, as no crime has been committed, said Sgt. Christie Wood.