CONCORD, N.C. -- Dangerous explosives were snatched from a Concord construction site last week, authorities said Friday.

Agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said someone stole nearly 100 pounds of Magnum Ultra HW explosives. They said that amount is enough to produce a devastating blast to a city’s center.

“Nearly 100 pounds can do considerable damage depending on where it's placed and how it's used," an ATF memo stated.

Agents said they’re worried about the damage that could be done if the explosives get into the wrong hands, but the explosives are relatively harmless unless someone knows how to detonate them.

Police said the explosives were taken when the locks were cut off a storage magazine at a construction site on Holden Avenue Southwest on Oct. 23. A blasting company was using the explosives to break through rock for a sewer line for a new housing development.

The blasting company CEO, Brad Barringer, said the explosives would have been used to create four blast holes about 30 feet deep.

Barringer said he knows it’s dangerous stuff, but he said there’s nothing his crews could have done to protect it any better.

"It's just like a bank robbery. It's just one of those things that happens, just like you can't prevent a crook from doing what he's going to do,” he said.

The construction site has been inspected and is up to code.

The ATF memo also included information on another large explosives heist where 2,200 pounds of a similar explosive were stolen recently from a worksite in Canada. The memo said nothing about connections in Concord, but said local law enforcement needs to know because it was stolen near our country's border.

PDF: ATF Release On Stolen Explosives