Westminster police and the state fire marshal's office raided a house on Ward Avenue yesterday and reported seizing pipe bombs, blasting caps, firearms and silencers. They arrested the occupant.

Westminster police Capt. Dean Brewer said Mark James Bauerlien, 37, of the first block of Ward Ave., a self-employed carpenter, was charged with the manufacture and possession of explosive devices.

Bauerlien was to appear last night at a bail hearing before a District Court commissioner, said a police official.

Brewer said police received a tip last week that the occupant of a house in the first block of Ward Ave. was manufacturing pipe bombs in his home and growing marijuana.

After a brief investigation of the tip, Brewer said, police applied for a search warrant yesterday and arrived at the house about noon. Finding no one home, police and a member of the state fire marshal's office entered the house.

During a two-hour search of a workshop in the basement of the two-story house, Brewer said, investigators found a dozen plastic pipe bombs between 3 inches and 6 inches long, filled with gunpowder and with fuses attached; blasting caps; wire commonly used for explosive devices; and two silencers.

Brewer said police also seized five handguns, two shotguns and five rifles; a pot and at least one ultraviolet lamp of the kind commonly used to grow marijuana; a pipe; and suspected marijuana residue.

Brewer said the officers took the pipe bombs and blasting caps to Goodwin's Quarry, about a half-mile south of town, and detonated them.

He said Detective Richard Ruby of the Westminster Police Department and Mark Van Baalen, a bomb expert from the State Fire Marshal's office, arrested the suspect when he arrived about 4 p.m.

Bauerlien was taken to police headquarters for an interview and was charged with 12 counts of possession and manufacturing explosive devices and illegal possession of two silencers, Brewer said .

"He said very little to us and gave no reason for making the pipe bombs," Brewer said.

Brewer said the case concerning the pipe bombs and the silencers will be turned over to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the state fire marshal's office.

He said if convicted of the explosive device charges, Bauerlien could be sentenced to 25 years in prison and given a heavy fine.

Brewer said clothes usually worn by hunters were found in the house and that it appeared Bauerlien, who is married and has at least one child, was a hunter. "We'll check out the firearms as a matter of routine," he said.

Brewer said Bauerlien's house is about 15 feet from adjacent dwellings.

Brewer said Bauerlien had been arrested in the past and charged with a fireworks violation but that the disposition of the charge was not immediately available.

Pub Date: 3/30/99