[Az-Geocaching] Bomb Squad

[Eric Quinn]

I thought the following information was interesting.
I'm sure that most of the subscribers here know that a
couple of caches have been blown up by bomb disposal
units. The original, and any follow up messages, can
be found at
http://opentopic.groundspeak.com/0/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=1750973553&f=3000917383&m=5810961104

--------------------------

I met with Washington State Patrol Trooper Mark Soper
today (he's with the Olympia Explosives Unit). He said
he'd be happy to take any questions at msoper at
wsp.wa.gov. He explained to me their process, and I
told him that I'd share what he said with the
WaGeocaching list, the Northwest forum, and this
forum.

There are four State Patrol bomb squad units in the
state, and they meet every three months with other
local bomb squads. He has placed a discussion of
geocaching on the agenda for their next meeting. He
has also contacted his colleagues in Oregon, and let
them know about geocaches. He was surprised there were
so many of them. 

Their process for a bomb call is, understandably, to
treat every device as ift it were a bomb. They'll
X-ray it, and if they can't get a good image of what's
inside, they'll destroy it with blasts of water.
Regardless, they'll remove whatever it is, because if
it's not a bomb, they have to treat it as abandoned
property. So this leads me to my first lesson learned.

Lesson 1: Hide it well.

He said that it would be most useful if we could place
a known logo on the outside of our cache containers,
along with a contact name and phone number. I
immediately thought of the "Official Geocache"
stickers that Groundspeak sells, but those don't have
a space for a phone number. They'd still have to
remove the cache if they found it though, and would
probably treat it the same way, but they'd have
someone to call to find out about it.

Lesson 2: Provide contact information and the
geocaching logo on the outside of the cache.

The story behind this call was interesting. On Sunday,
March 3, a geocacher in a vehicle with California
plates stopped at the rest area. A citizen watched the
geocacher get out, look at their GPS, and head over
behind a tree. Suddenly, the geocacher ducked down
behind the tree, did something for a few minutes, then
ran back to their vehicle and drove away quickly.

The person watching this thought it was odd, but
didn't do anything. They mentioned it to a co-worker
on Monday, March 4, and on Tuesday, March 5, he and
his co-worker returned to the site. They found the
cache, saw "I Hate I-5 XXV" written on it, and called
9-1-1.

It never occurred to me that the name of the cache
would cause alarm, particularly since 24 other caches
with the same name had been hidden without incident. I
never thought about it. To keep that from happening
again, I've come up with another lesson.

Lesson 3: Don't write the name of the cache on the
outside of the cache. 

Trooper Soper also mentioned the tupperware geocache
that had been blown up in Nevada. I don't know if he'd
heard about it before or after they'd found this one,
though.

The silver lining of this is that the bomb squads in
this state now are aware of geocaching, and will be
able to breathe a tiny bit easier once the next one is
reported to them. They'll still remove it, though, and
in the interest of public safety, will still need to
treat it as if it were a bomb.



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