Blasts from the past

Suicide bombers and WMD might grab the headlines, but it’s meth labs and old ordnance that are keeping bomb squads busy. 

As the recent bombings in London demonstrate, there’s good reason for bomb squads across the country to keep terrorism high on their list of priorities.

"Unfortunately, this is going to be our future,"says Special Agent Kevin G. Miles, an fbi bomb technician. "We have to learn to live with this."

"I think we'd be foolish to believe that just New York, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., are targets," adds Ken Hines, assistant fire chief and bomb squad commander for the Boone County (Mo.) Fire Protection District. With populations on alert in those big cities, savvy terrorists may decide to hit smaller, less-guarded targets. And even if every last al-Qaida cell were found, bombs would still be a significant concern. "Bombings aren't going away."

And while events such as the ones in London, and in Madrid a year ago, do increase public concern about bombings, Hines isn’t nearly as concerned about al-Qaida as he is about some more-local groups.

"The Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, domestic terrorist groups,"Hines says. "I don’t really have concern about Islamic-related events here, but we're on the fringes of the white separatist movement and the drug component."

Division of labor 
In fact, while there aren’t a lot of numbers available, from talking to bomb squad commanders around the country, it’s evident that the growth areas for bomb squads are calls for meth labs and old ordnance, not terrorism.

Still, the vast majority of calls are for suspicious packages. Both Miles and Sgt. Stan Mathiasen, of the Santa Barbara County (Calif.) Sheriff’s Department, say that such calls make up at least a third of all bomb squad calls.

"Bomb squads for many years have also become suspicious-item squads," jokes Miles, who’s also second assistant international director for the International Association of Bomb Technicians and Investigators <www.iabti.org>, although he immediately adds that he much prefers an "abundance of caution."

If anything, he rails against police officers and other first responders who will pick up suspicious packages and drive them to the bomb squad. "I’ve seen them do it,"he sighs.

Miles says that while suspicious-package calls spiked significantly right after Sept. 11, 2001, since then, the number of calls has pretty much leveled off to just somewhat more than there were before 9-11.

"In some locations it's gone way up," he says, noting that airports and federal buildings, in

particular, where security is tighter, tend to follow suspicious-package protocols a lot more stringently.

Steady business  
But Miles notes that calls involving actual explosive devices have remained pretty level for quite some time. "Bomb squads get 1,300 to 1,500 devices per year nationwide, and that has held fairly steady even after 9-11."

"The actual bombs, from pipe bombs to homemade grenades, they’re between 5% and 10% of the call load,"says bomb tech Jim Murray of the Tucson (Ariz.) Police Department.

But Mathiasen, who’s also the chairman of the National Bomb Squad Commanders Advisory Board <www.nbscab.net>, says that even in rural areas, there’s still a significant threat of explosive criminal activity. "With the proliferation of meth labs, the increase in domestic terrorism and white hate groups operating primarily in rural areas, the threat is definitely there."

Calls to take care of illicit labs making methamphetamines are one of the few areas where bomb squads are seeing more action.

"I know nationally, meth labs have just exploded," Mathiasen says.

Hines, in Missouri, says his department gets two to three calls a week to take care of meth labs.

"The meth trade, that’s also in­creased our call load,"Murray says, adding that the problem isn’t just the highly explosive nature of the chemicals involved. "The meth heads like to tinker a lot, and they tend to have a fascination with things that go boom."

So, in addition to a lack of safety controls in such illegal labs, there are also booby traps, mostly set to ward off the competition.

In Tucson and the Los Angeles area, where Miles is assigned, illegal fireworks are also a concern.

But oddly enough, the other growth area for calls that’s mentioned frequently doesn’t even involve a crime: the removal of old ordnance.

"There’s quite a bit of it out there," says Sgt. Dave Roger, bomb squad commander for the Peoria (Ill.) Police Department. He explains that World War II veterans would bring home guns, ammo and grenades from Germany and Japan as souvenirs. "In those days, they didn’t have the restrictions against bringing stuff home."

But now that these veterans are dying in increasing numbers, their survivors are finding all sorts of dangerous explosives in attics, garages and basements.

Roger and Murray agree that old tnt is not a good thing. "Nitroglycerine has a tendency to deteriorate," Roger says.

Roger says that old Japanese hand grenades are particularly dangerous." The Japanese used a lot of picric acid in their grenades, and over a period of time it crystallizes. They become very unstable. A sharp bump or knock against those crystals…." He doesn’t finish the sentence.

Calls for old explosives are "a very high percentage for us,"Murray says, but not just for vets who’ve passed away." There was tons of wildcat mining around here. So Gramps died and they're cleaning out the shed."

Terrorism: On the B-list   
What most squads are not as concerned about, even if they're prepared and trained for them, are wmds: chemical, radiological and biological hazards.

"Training-wise, it's one of the most taxing," Murray says. "There’s a lot of training involved in the wmd side, but in reality the odds of wmd here is a one-percenter. But that's part of our job description is to be able to work in the wmd."

"I know that stuff’s important,"says Roger, who also oversees training in his department." You have to train for the potentiality of it, but you can’t let it become an overriding concern."

Hines concedes that WMDs are a possibility, but not one he thinks is very likely. "The WMD is stuff you need to be prepared for, but I think that within our circle [of bomb technicians], what we’re much more concerned about is conventional explosives. They have been the weapon of choice."

Hines also points out that conventional explosives have three major advantages over WMDs: They're easy to make, highly successful and easy to deliver. Indeed, aside from the sarin attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, there have been no terrorist attacks using dirty bombs of any sort.

Miles goes so far as express annoyance over the obsession with wmd. "WMD is an industry right now," he growls. "If I hear any more about the chem-bio threat, I’m going to throw up."

What does concern him and the others we spoke with, however, are large vehicle bombs, such as the one used in the Oklahoma City bombing. Both Miles and Roger express concern that it remains very easy to get enough ammonium nitrate fertilizer to manufacture such bombs. On the other hand, both acknowledge that that’s partly due to living in the free atmosphere of the United States.

Measures and countermeasures

Their other major concern is bombs detonated by radio-control methods.

"With remote-control devices, you don’t know who’s watching you,"Miles says.

Hines cites the bombing of an abortion clinic a number of years ago that killed a police officer. The officer was just looking at the suspicious device and hadn’t even touched it when the bomber detonated it from a remote location.

Roger notes that a lot of the bombs in Iraq are detonated by radio control, using cell phones. The good news is that the problem is being worked on, although Miles, who’s among those working on it, declines to say much.

"There’s been a lot of experimentation, but I don’t really see a viable device out there in the near future,"Roger says. Part of the problem is the plethora of radio channels used in the United States. "You have to have a pretty good idea what channel they’re on for something to be as powerful as it needs to be. Otherwise, you’d be knocking out cell phones and everything else."

In the meantime, there’s more accessible technology in the form of various robots. Roger’s department had just gotten their medium-sized Remotec robot a month before this interview and had already used it.

"We got back on a Friday with it,"he says. "The following Tuesday, we had a suspected pipe bomb. It was found in a guy’s car. We took the robot up and checked it out with the camera system on it. Turns out it was a hoax device, but it certainly looked real enough that I wasn’t willing to go and pick it up."

Mathiasen says that robots are getting to be a pretty critical piece of equipment. "On the [nbscab] board level, we have mandated that by 2009, every accredited bomb squad will have some kind of robotic capability."

Police, fire and funding 
And it looks like there will be money to buy robots, even for smaller departments. Mathiasen says that right after 9-11, when dhs was just beginning, and the standard equipment lists were being developed, bomb squads were all but ignored. "There wasn’t a lot of bomb squad equipment on those lists. That’s why you saw a lot of equipment going to fire departments."

Nowadays, thanks to lobbying, the lists include a great deal more bomb squad equipment. And while funding has decreased slightly, there’s still a significant amount of money available from the federal government.

"There is a lot of grant money," Miles says, "and a lot of the bomb squads are learning what the fire departments have known for years: how to write grants. The federal government is not going to buy it for you."Another reason fire departments seemed to have a lock on grant funds is that they're the agencies mostly responsible for hazmat response (even though hazmat training is now required for bomb technicians, too), and much of the money available has been for WMD and hazmat.

But Murray says that although fire departments eating up grant money has been something of a concern, he’s more worried about getting money for other things besides equipment. "If we’re hurting somewhere, it’s that we’re not getting that funding to go to specialized training. There is some tremendous information coming out of Iraq on how they’re making the bombs and setting them off. We’ve tried several times to get some up-to-date training."

Mathiasen says that the information is on a secure Web site that’s available to bomb technicians. "The information is there. It's being exploited in Iraq and being sent back." While Murray mentions the issue of fire departments and funding, he doesn’t begrudge fire departments the cash and equipment. Overall, there seems to be good cooperation between fire departments and police department bomb squads, probably because the two work together so often.

In fact, Hines says he doesn’t think it makes much difference whether a bomb squad operates out of the law enforcement side (as about 90% of 450 accredited bomb squads in the United States do) or out of the fire department.

"I guess it depends on the community and the level of involvement," Hines says, noting that the Boone County Fire District is a mostly volunteer force with some career officers. "I think it's a good mix to have fire department squads. It brings different perspectives to the bomb squad. On the police side, you have trained investigators, where on the fire department side, you have more hazmat. So there's a nice mix."

In his department, Hines is a commissioned law enforcement officer, and he knows of bomb squads that also do arson investigation.

But Hines also notes that good relations between disciplines may have something to do with the bomb squad community’s small size, which he estimates at maybe 2,500 bomb technicians in the entire country.

"We have a great working relationship between the disciplines," Hines says.

Which is just as well, because the threat is real.

"We’re not used to the threat," says Miles. "We haven’t seen a real suicide bomber here in the United States. We haven’t seen a radio-controlled bomb. The bomb squads will be in the forefront. It will be a nightmare, but they’re ready for it."

Anne Louise Bannon is a Los Angeles–based freelance writer.