Bomb Scare Highlights Need for Robot

Dressed in black protective gear resembling a spacesuit, Detective Joe Braga crawled to within inches of a suspected pipe bomb discovered in an alley in Ventura on Monday afternoon.

With bare hands, Braga carefully tied a rope to the end of the 7-inch pipe so it could be pulled into a protective steel tank and hauled away. Seeing a partially burned fuse, he figured that this was not a false alarm.

“Yes, I’m scared at that point, because if you’re not, that’s when accidents happen,” said Braga, one of three bomb technicians in the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Squad.

The pipe was removed without incident from an alley between Catalina and San Clemente streets south of Main Street. Braga worried that had it exploded, the device could have blown off his hands or worse.

Soon, however, Braga and the others hope to leave their worries behind.

Today, the Sheriff’s Department will ask the Ventura County Board of Supervisors to buy a remote-control robot that can examine and defuse bombs while its human controllers stay a safe distance away.

Known as Andros Mark V-A, the 600-pound contraption has long been coveted by bomb squad members. And they believe that the supervisors will see the need.

“I would be absolutely flabbergasted if they don’t support it unanimously,” said Lt. Tom Convery, who heads the bomb squad.

Despite the hazards of bomb squad duty, the only extra compensation its members get is a $100,000 life insurance policy.

For $120,000, the county could prevent his death, Convery said.

Furthermore, he said, the Sheriff’s Department is not asking for money from the General Fund. The supervisors have only to approve transferring money for purchase of a robot from a fund used to buy equipment for the department, Convery said.

The robot, manufactured by Remotec Inc. of Oak Ridge, Tenn., moves on rollers, like a tank, and views its prey with television cameras while a fully revolving arm is operated by remote control.

The same model is used in the Los Angeles Police Department and the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department, among others, Convery said.

“In my opinion, unless you have a robot, you don’t have any business having a bomb team,” Convery said.

The number of calls handled by the bomb squad has grown from 43 in 1989 to 70 last year, and about half of those involved explosives rather than hoaxes or misunderstandings, Convery said. “You never know what can happen,” Braga said.