Bomb Squads Are Left Lacking
Multiple Attacks Would Reveal Equipment Gaps

By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, July 13, 2007

Many local bomb squads in the Washington area are under-equipped to respond to the kind of simultaneous attacks being attempted by terrorists around the world, most recently in London, officials say.

None of the eight local and state bomb squads in the region is top-rated under the classification of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the local officials. The region has asked the Department of Homeland Security for $8 million to bring them to the highest level.

Some officials said the lack of top-level status isn't critical. In an emergency, local squads would get help from explosives experts from the area's military bases or federal agencies including the FBI and U.S. Capitol Police, they said.

But some first responders worry that federal agencies might be tied up with their own responsibilities during a crisis or could face such complications as gridlocked traffic, particularly if there is an attack in the suburbs.

"We don't want to create a false sense of security for residents," said Keith Brower, head of the bomb-squad committee of the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments. "The bomb squads don't have what they need to handle multiple events or provide the top-line services we need in this day and age."

The D.C. area has a Virginia state bomb squad plus units in the District, the Metro system and in Arlington, Fairfax, Loudoun, Montgomery and Prince George's counties. Some are part of fire departments, while others belong to police departments.

They are all considered Type 2 on FEMA's three-level classification system, said Brower, who is also Loudoun's fire marshal. That means the squads are well-equipped, with at least two bomb-response teams each.

A Type 1 squad is superior in that it can respond to simultaneous attacks and has more sophisticated equipment, such as a robot that can handle car bombs and advanced monitors for weapons of mass destruction.

Because of national security concerns, FEMA does not disclose how many cities have Type 1 bomb squads, said a spokesman, Aaron Walker. But the other five cities considered top U.S. terrorism targets -- New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and San Francisco -- all have Type 1 bomb squads, according to their media offices.

Squads in the Washington area vary in how close they come to Type 1 status, with some lacking only a few pieces of equipment.

For example, the Fairfax police unit needs a video-communications system linking it to other bomb squads, said spokeswoman Mary Ann Jennings. The D.C. police squad lacks equipment to handle a large truck or car bomb, said Lt. Steven Sund, of the homeland security division.

Other squads have bigger gaps -- needing more robots, containment devices and sophisticated bomb-sniffing dogs, officials said.

Sund said D.C. police are fortunate because "we can reach out to some of our partners" in the region for help if there is a large-scale car or truck bombing. He and other local bomb-squad officials emphasized their excellent relationships with counterparts at federal agencies.

Some first responders, however, are wary about relying too much on federal experts.

"It's not that we don't work with them," said Arlington Fire Chief James H. Schwartz, the head of the region's fire chief committee, which oversees local bomb squads. He praised the U.S. Capitol Police squad as "very, very robust" but added that its core mission is to protect the Capitol.

"I don't envision them responding to Fairfax," Schwartz said.

Mike Love, who oversees the bomb squad in Montgomery's fire department, said the military could be tied up with other commitments. "You continue to pump resources into the Middle East, we don't necessarily know what we have back here" at military bases, he said.

Sgt. Thomas Sharkey, head of Metro's bomb squad, said that in case of a threat, he would contact the FBI, which trains and certifies all the state and local squads.

"One phone call and I would have all of their resources available for my needs, which would obviously put us at a Type 1 level," he said. But complications could arise if several suspected bombs are discovered at once, he said.

"If two different jurisdictions are handling multiple, simultaneous incidents at the same time, then what happens?" he asked.

Mike Heimbach, who heads the counterterrorism division at the FBI's Washington field office, said he is "pretty comfortable" that the region could handle such simultaneous attacks because of the cooperation between federal, state and local agencies. But, he said, the local bomb squads believe they need better tools because the area is such a likely target.

"Let's face it: The nation's capital being high on al-Qaeda's radar, we should have the best of the best," he said.

The $8 million request to upgrade the bomb squads is part of the D.C. area's yearly application for a major Homeland Security anti-terrorism grant. The region has asked for a total of $140 million.

According to one official briefed on the process, Homeland Security is expected to announce this month that the region will get about $56 million. It's not clear how much would go to the bomb squads.

The upgrade "is extremely important. That's underscored by the recent events in the United Kingdom," said Robert P. Crouch, the top Virginia homeland security official, who manages the national capital area grant along with his Maryland and D.C. counterparts.

The foiled U.K. plot involved two cars in London rigged with propane canisters and nails, plus a subsequent attack on an airport terminal in Glasgow, Scotland.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. military and intelligence agencies have poured resources into preventing an attack via a weapon of mass destruction. Al-Qaeda and its followers have instead turned to simultaneous homemade bombs in places including Spain, England and Morocco.

After a quadruple bombing on the London transit system July 7, 2005, bomb-squad commanders in the D.C. area "asked some hard questions" about how they would cope with such attacks, said Pat Race, a bomb technician with the FBI's Washington field office.

The answer: Not as well as they'd like. The squads began pulling together a list of what they lacked, in consultation with the FBI.

"Some needed bomb suits. Some needed more diagnostic equipment. Some might have needed robotic equipment," Brower said. The squads, he said, had "significant equipment operational needs."

The $8 million upgrade was part of the region's Homeland Security grant application last year. But it was shelved after the award came in far lower than expected, at $46 million. Local officials protested at a congressional hearing, warning that the bomb squads had immediate equipment needs.

Edward D. Reiskin, the District's former deputy mayor for public safety, said officials decided to postpone the bomb-squad plan because "we do have pretty good capacity. Like everything else, it's not at the level we'd like it."

The local bomb squads have received hundreds of thousands of dollars for equipment from state or local governments in recent years, much of it stemming from other federal grants, officials said.

But new equipment is expensive, with bomb suits costing more than $20,000 each, officials said. In addition, Sharkey said, "technical advances have been just drastic" in recent years, prompting the desire for better gear.

FEMA has no requirements on which cities need to have a Type 1 bomb squad; the classification is simply to help first responders identify who has what resources, said the agency's spokesman.

Schwartz said local commanders would like all the region's squads to be at Type 1, because they frequently work together. And although terrorists might be most likely to strike national icons in the District, the suburbs are home to U.S. intelligence, military and other government facilities as well as several airports, officials note.

Just last year, two U.S. citizens were charged in Atlanta with plotting attacks against targets including a fuel storage depot off Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia.

"We're listed as a target-rich environment, as a region," Brower said. "Everybody's got something that could become a sensitive target."