Disarming Personality Prevails on O.C.’s Bomb Squad

Many Americans have bombs on the brain these days, trying to sort out the kind of menace in our midst that would blow up an airplane and disrupt the Olympics. As if Oklahoma City last year weren’t enough.

Typically, the threat occupies our minds for a while, then we move on to another anxiety.

How would you like to always have bombs on the brain?

Charlie Stumph does. He supervises the Orange County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad and points out he’s the only one remaining from the unit that formed 25 years ago.

No, no, it’s not what you think. The others simply moved on to other jobs.

Through TV and movies, we have our mythologies about bomb squaders. I picture people with nerves of steel attached to fingers so soft they could touch something and not leave a print. Is there any other job out there that combines that level of technical know-how with pure guts?

“Right now, it’s probably more dangerous than it’s ever been than any time in history,” Stumph says. “We’re seeing more and more powerful explosives, we’re seeing explosive products that can be mixed up in your garage, and home-made bombs that are more powerful than anything that can be bought. We’re also seeing fusing mechanisms that are intricate. It used to be an alarm clock and two sticks of dynamite.”

Stumph, 52, supervises an 11-person detail. In June, the unit handled 207 suspicious packages and disarmed 28 homemade bombs, Stumph says. Obviously, every call is a potential threat.

How do people go to work every day knowing they may be killed?

“That’s not the way it goes,” Stumph says. “This may sound crazy, but you really don’t think about the fear. You tell yourself, ‘I’m going to stay alive while I’m doing it and use the safety equipment, my training, my on-the-job knowledge and with all the resources available, I’m going to neutralize that device.’ When it all gets done, it’s a feeling you can’t describe.”

Like others in the tight-knit fraternity of the bomb squad, Stumph has closely followed the recent bombing episodes. Most of the shop talk so far, he says, has involved irritation at some of the so-called experts trotted out on TV.

I asked him if bomb squaders imagine matching wits with the mad bomber who has rigged the device. “I don’t think so. We think more about the device. The device is your enemy. It’s me against the machine. Once you get done with it, then you can focus on whoever put that enemy together.”

Stumph has been a patrol officer, but I asked if bomb detail isn’t almost a different job entirely. “A regular street copper may go through his entire career without ever having a suspect with a firearm pointed at him with the hammer cocked,” Stumph says. “My guys get this on a daily basis. You face this crisis situation on an ongoing basis, but you also have a lot more freedom in making decisions on how to neutralize a situation than a regular officer does.”

Obviously, that’s because the foe is a box or a sack or a pipe. Stumph remembers one of the golden oldies--a case in the early 1980s in an Anaheim bakery.

“This was before the days of robots and bomb suits,” he says. “We had nine devices all with their own power system, and radio-controlled. I had two brand-new people with me, and we worked for 16 hours straight trying to render them safe. So, you’re concerned with the device, but you’ve also got two people you’re really concerned with.”

These days, bomb units across the country believe they’re keeping up with the bad guys.

“The big thing now is the pipe bomb,” Stumph says. “Everyone thinks of a pipe bomb, but there are literally hundreds of fillers, and some are very stable and some could go off with no lit fuse.”

So, I asked him, are you guys really crazy?

“Most people hang that handle on you. ‘You guys are on the bomb squad, you must be crazy.’ But we take a lot of pains in trying to find that cowboy mentality and getting rid of it in the selection process. The biggest thing we’re looking for is teamwork. This is not an individual effort.”

Still, we are talking about a different breed.

“It takes a real special person to be in the field,” Stumph concedes. “When the stress is on, it’s on like you can’t believe. You’ve been given the assignment of neutralizing this infernal machine. It’s not a thing where you can sit back and say let me get a lieutenant or a captain or the chief to give direction on how it goes. It’s your thing out there.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.