[intense nervous music]
[explosion blasting]
- [Narrator] Improvised explosion devices,
there's no set standard on how that's gonna look.
So every time we encounter a device, it's different
and we have to take all the precautions
necessary to protect ourselves.
- [Narrator] Fire in the hole.
[explosion blasting]
- My name is John Stewart.
I'm a FBI agent.
I'm a unit chief of the Hazardous Devices School.
[suspenseful music] I started off
in the United States Navy.
I was an enlisted EOD tech for 12 years
and then was hired as an FBI agent.
My primary mission was to provide support
to our state and local bomb technicians.
I've responded to a number of calls.
Those calls resulted in the discovery of military ordnance,
hand grenades, improvised explosion laboratories
where people are making homemade explosives.
Those calls resulted in us disrupting pipe bombs.
If they needed me to dress out in a bomb suit
and go to a range, I'm trained and capable to do that.
If they need me for post blast experience
to help them collect evidence,
we're there to help them do that because that all
falls in the category of bomb technician responsibilities.
I worked a number of cases on the international
terrorism side, I spent approximately two years
in Afghanistan working as a FBI bomb technician
conducting post blast analysis and analysis of IEDs
for the US government.
[explosion blasting] So if something blew up
out in town, we would go out
and do a post blast investigation,
recover all the components we could find,
bring that back into a controlled environment
and then try to recreate and determine
exactly how that IED functioned.
And then I was able to come to the Hazardous Devices School
and become a certified public safety bomb technician.
[explosion blasting]
IED means improvised explosive device.
By the mere term, it's improvised
and they come in all shapes and forms.
They have to have some type of power supply
or some type of way to get heat into the explosives.
They have to have some type of switch.
They have to have some type of container
and they have to have conductors
and wires and things like that.
When you take an x-ray of an IED,
you're looking for the key components.
You're looking for the explosive charge,
you're looking for the switch,
and you're looking for battery power to determine
whether it's an IED or not.
There are two different types of explosives.
There are high explosives and low explosives
and those really are based on the deflagration or burn rate
or the ability for the explosives
to change from a solid to a gaseous state.
Low explosives burn or deflagrate and high explosives
change from solid to a gas in microseconds.
[explosion blasting]
When we're dealing with IEDs,
some can be a low explosive or a powder,
some can be high explosives.
Military ordnance uses high explosives inside of it.
Low explosives are typically seen
in some type of contained vessel
like a pipe bomb or a pressure cooker.
The pressure cooker is a standard
pressure cooker that holds pressure,
has a low explosive in it that burns
and as it burns the pressure cooker
contains the low explosive build up
until it can't contain it anymore and then it overcomes
the pressure cooker and explodes.
It's a mechanical explosion.
[crowd cheering] [distant announcer talking]
[explosion blasting]
[screaming]
As you know, the Boston bombing,
they used pressure cookers in there.
Everyone who was able to watch that on TV
and see it through news reports witnessed what happened.
So we had several bombs that blew up
on the streets of Boston. [sirens blaring]
- Fellas, watch for secondary devices!
- Following that event,
there was an evacuation that occurred.
They removed the wounded.
The bomb technicians then have to go in and do some
threat assessment and analyze everything left to determine
whether there's any more bombs in the area.
As you can imagine there are backpacks
and boxes all over the street,
and so they have to go and threat assess
their way through all of those packages
to determine if there's any more bombs
that pose a potential danger for the public.
We categorize IEDs into three different categories.
We have victim initiated which means the victim
has to do something to make it go off.
We have time, which means in a certain amount of time
it's gonna detonate and then we have radio controlled
or remote control which means someone else
is controlling when that device is gonna detonate.
An improvised explosive device presents
a number of personal injury issues.
Of course there's a fragmentation issue that comes with it.
The fragmentation is gonna break windows,
it's gonna penetrate skin, it's gonna hurt people,
it's gonna destroy property.
Every explosion carries a thermal effect,
so like a heat wave or heat ball
or fire ball that comes off.
There's a potential for things to catch on fire and burn
because of the fire ball that comes off of that explosive.
[explosion blasting]
And then there's what we refer to as the blast wave.
It's the invisible wave of pressure that flies out.
[explosion blasting]
The blast pressure affects glass, it affects ear drums,
internal organs, and things like that.
But we have calculations that we use to determine
how far to evacuate people to help us to provide
better protection from fragmentation and overpressure.
[intense nervous music]
The Hazardous Devices School curriculum
was originally developed by the Department of the Army.
We took the tactics, techniques, and procedures
that the military was teaching their bomb techs
when they were dealing with IEDs
and we used that same information
to develop our original curriculum back in 1971.
The Vietnam War was drawing down and bomb technicians
from the Vietnam War were coming back,
going to work for police departments
and performing bomb tech activities.
This school is designed to train
public safety law enforcement who have no information
about bombs, all the techniques, tactics, and procedures
to be deployed and used
when they're working on suspicious devices.
During training there are a number of key areas
we like bomb techs to leave here with.
I think the most important one is their ability
to conduct a threat assessment.
To look at something and to try to determine
in their mind why it's there and what's potentially
gonna cause it to go off.
You have to know electronics so when you're analyzing
your x-rays and you see certain things in the x-ray,
you have to be able to determine what they are.
You have to know how to run a robot,
just in case you can do it remotely.
You have to know how to use explosives
because a lot of the tools they use in the field
are explosively-driven tools.
So you have to know how to safely handle explosives
to load those tools and place them and fire them.
[explosion blasting]
[sirens rapidly blaring]
Bomb squads across America receive bomb calls all the time.
Once their dispatch receives a call,
they make a notification to the bomb squad.
The bomb squad then goes to the scene.
Once there, they meet with an on scene commander
or the individual in charge
and they try to gather some intelligence.
What is it, where is it, how did it get there,
how long has it been there,
al of those questions are asked.
Another big important part is,
is there an evacuation that has occurred?
Have we moved all the people out far enough so if this thing
were to detonate before we made it down range,
they wouldn't be hurt?
Once all of that is taken place,
there's a determination, do we do this remotely with robots
or do we have to put someone in the bomb suit?
If we can perform all the actions we need with a robot,
it's sent down range to perform x-rays.
They can fire tools off of the robot,
they can do a number of things
that prevents a bomb technician
from having to get into a bomb suit
and actually going down range.
[explosion blasting] [murmuring]
But on occasion there are times
when the robot will not work.
Depending on where the device is at,
depending on the complex situation we have,
there's potential for the bomb technician
to actually have to get in a bomb suit
and go down and do the initial work.
Make an assessment of the device,
perform passive diagnostics,
take x-rays, and then place a disruption tool.
Once that's done, everybody falls back to a safe area
and they perform an action to disrupt that package.
So the process of putting the bomb technician
in the bomb suit is fairly easy
but it takes a number of people to do it.
So right now they're putting on the trousers.
The trousers are Kevlar and Nomex
and they provide protection to the lower extremities.
There's also a back protector that provides very limited
protection to your back.
So after the trousers are on,
the bomb technicians will affix
the integrated groin protector and that provides limited
thermal protection and ballistic protection
to the groin area.
He's now putting on a balaclava.
That helps provide protection to the helmet
and absorb the sweat and the bomb technician
is performing his duties.
The next piece of equipment
that will go on the bomb technician is the helmet.
That's the EOD 9 helmet.
That's a visor that moves up and down.
So when the bomb tech is down range next to the device,
he would have the visor pulled down.
The next piece of equipment they'll put on is the jacket.
It is a Nomex Kevlar make up.
The big black plate you see on the front
is a Kevlar shield.
It provides maximum protection from fragmentation
to the vital organ area.
They then tighten Velcro around the wrist of the jacket,
providing the bomb technician dexterity
with his fingers while he's working.
On the left side you will see a control panel.
That control panel controls the fan inside of the helmet
to help control body temperature.
It also helps the shield from fogging up
and there's lights on the helmet that the bomb tech,
if desired, can turn on.
Right now they're gonna raise the collar up,
providing protection for the neck area
between the gap where the helmet and the jacket meet.
So you'll notice that the hands are not covered.
That's for maximum dexterity.
The bomb tech needs to be able to work with tools
and if you put gloves on him,
it restricts his ability to use his fingers and hands.
[intense curious music]
Once the bomb squad arrives on scene
and they collect their intelligence,
they have to determine what type of approach they make.
If they determine that they have to put a bomb technician
down for time on target, there's a couple things
that they need to do.
So they'll dress the bomb technician out in the bomb suit
and then they wanna walk down range
and conduct a threat assessment
and some diagnostics of that package.
One way they conduct diagnostics is through their vision.
What is it, where's it at,
and why is it sitting where it's sitting?
Next thing they would do is take a x-ray of the package.
This machine generates x-rays that run through the package
and presents an image on a phosphorus panel.
The bomb tech would put the phosphorus panel
behind the suspect package and then generate some pulses
with this to get an x-ray.
They'll also bring down some tools to do some work
because we like to minimize time on target.
That's time that a person is standing next to the device.
And they'll place those after they perform their x-ray
for a standard general purpose shot.
They'll go back and develop the x-ray
and if the x-ray has determined that it is an actual device
they will fire those tools
without ever having to approach the device again.
This is a pan disruptor.
Very common in the bomb technician world.
It's a percussion actuated, non-electrically fired device.
the pan disruptor is a steel tube
that uses shotgun cartridges.
We'll fill this tube full of water.
We'll plug it on the end.
We'll put a blank shotgun shell
into the end of it and then we use what is called a breech.
It has a firing pin that is then projected forward
by an explosively-driven shockwave from shock tube.
- [Woman] Three, two, one.
[explosion blasting]
- That way, we can fire that remotely and the bomb
technician doesn't have to be anywhere around the package.
Another tool that's very common is a mineral water bottle.
On the interior of this bottle is a plastic
tube that's filled with C4 explosives.
This is an omnidirectional tool
so when you detonate the C4,
that water is gonna strike the package
and hopefully disrupt the suspect package
that we're working on.
This can be fired a number of different ways,
but typically it's fired with a Primadet
with non-electric shock two.
A Primadet is nothing more than a non-electric type
blasting cap that is hooked to shock tube
and there's basically an explosive wave that goes down
and it initiates the explosives in the tube.
One of the tools available
to the bomb technician is a hydrojet.
This is a 32 ounce hydrojet.
It's a directional charge,
which means it's filled with water.
This plastic sheet inside is formed to make a V.
You would take data sheet or sheet explosives
and affix it to this V.
It then goes back into the hydrojet that is full of water
and it's fired with a Primadet.
Once it's fired, the projection of the explosives
drives the water into a knife
and cuts through suspect packages.
[explosion blasting]
[intense curious music]
Since the inception of the curriculum,
there's been a lot of change in the bomb tech community.
Explosives are still the same.
IEDs, the devices that we deal with,
but of course with computers and being able to get online
and research, the sophistication of those have risen.
[mechanical whirring]
Most importantly is our tools that we use
to do diagnostics and disrupt IEDs
have increased dramatically.
[explosion blasting]
Our x-ray systems are some of the best in the world.
Our disruption tools are some of the best in the world
and they're all designed to provide more protection
for the bomb tech while he's performing those duties,
which in turn provides more protection for our public.
Typically, procedures that are trained
here at the Hazardous Devices School
are employed out in our cities and states across America.
It happens often, where bomb squads
are notified of suspicious packages.
That happens across America every day.
There's no playbook that says, if it's this, do this.
Or if it's that, do that.
We have to use the tools and techniques that we're taught.
We have to use a good threat assessment
and we have to work our way
through every single problem we encounter.