UPDATE:
Bethlehem Police have released the name of the man they've arrested after finding a suspicious device at the Cherry Arms Apartments on Delaware Avenue in Delmar.
Police say Jason Sanchez, 24, was taken into custody after refusing the leave the building Tuesday evening.
Sanchez faces first degree reckless endangerment, resisting arrest and obstructing governmental administration.
Police say chemicals that were found include acetone, xylene, lab grade nitric acid, sulfuric acid, propane torch and butane fuel.
Police add that these chemicals were recklessly stored, creating a hazardous environment to tenants and were capable of producing an exothermic reaction.
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A law enforcement source tells FOX23 News a young man was experimenting with dangerous chemicals in the basement of the Delmar apartment building. He is the older brother of the Delmar teen who was severely burned in a house explosion last winter.
Officials still don't know what was in that basement.
Crews were on the scene for about eight hours, but the investigation is just beginning.
Bethlehem Police say they were called to the Cherry Arms Apartments in Delmar around 2 p.m. Tuesday by a neighbor who thought she saw some suspicious chemicals in the basement of the apartment building at 633 Delaware Avenue.
Police evacuated residents and called in county-wide and federal authorities to analyze the chemicals.
Bethlehem Police Deputy Chief Timothy Beebe said, "According to the experts on the scene, they don't present a hazard to anybody outside the immediate area right now."
A law enforcement source tells FOX23 News that the man responsible for the chemicals is a college student who is the older brother of Keenan Sanchez, the Delmar teen who was burned over 40 percent of his body when his 151 Adams Place home exploded and burned down last Dec. 19.
Tom Leonard lives in the evacuated apartment building. He spent his night at the Bethlehem Town Hall.
He says there was a young man who used to work in the common storage area in the basement. "He was down there in the middle of the night, making all kinds of noise," said Leonard.
He also says, when he was forced from his home Tuesday afternoon, he saw a young man in the back of a police cruiser. "A cop holding onto one arm - on that side, another cop holding onto his other arm on that side, and he was sort of belligerent,” said Leonard.
No one was hurt but there was a massive response to what a source describes as a “dangerous situation.”
There have been no arrests and Bethlehem Police will not say whether or not they have anyone in custody.
