SPECIAL REPORT * With the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department answering more than 1,500 such calls a year, agencies worry about . . . Explosive Dangers in ‘Bomb Capital’

At any other time, and maybe any other place, the appearance last December of a big moving van at a parking lot in El Segundo would have barely drawn notice.

But this van wasn’t parked just anywhere. It was left outside the day-care center at Los Angeles Air Force Base, near LAX. And the vehicle, authorities learned, was driven by someone whose last name did not match anyone at the base, but did match someone questioned in the Oklahoma City bombing.

So on a quiet weekday afternoon, officials evacuated the base and its day-care center as bomb squads moved in to determine the vehicle’s contents. What they found was a van full of home furnishings--it belonged to the newlywed wife of an Air Force officer who had rented the vehicle using her maiden name.

And even if the incident did not turn up any explosives, it underscored a rarely mentioned fact about Los Angeles:

It’s the primary target in America for bomb calls and, increasingly, a place where officials worry about terrorism.

“If you talk to the experts, they will tell you it is not a matter of ‘if’ something will occur here, it is a matter of ‘when,’ ” said Ron Smalstig, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who specializes in arson explosives cases.

Consider the following:

* Los Angeles police and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have two of the busiest bomb squads in the country, some say the world--responding, between them, to well over 1,500 calls a year. “We are busier than Beirut. We are busier than Belfast,” said Smalstig. Unlike those cities, which have had terrible histories of deadly explosions, Los Angeles has had to contend with a far greater number of bomb threats.

* Although most of the calls turn out to be hoaxes or false alarms, a growing number of cases involve the disarming of potentially deadly explosives. In 1997, the number of calls to the sheriff’s bomb detail rose only slightly compared to 1996, but the number of live explosives almost doubled--from 334 to 623. The LAPD, meanwhile, also has seen an increase in calls, with its 14-member bomb squad responding to more than 900 incidents a year recently, or an average of almost three calls per day. Although no number was available for New York City, Chicago’s bomb squad last year responded to 482 calls.

* So serious is the perceived threat from explosives in Southern California that even Disneyland has its own security staff trained in explosives and bomb recognition.

* Teams of FBI agents specially trained in responding to biological or chemical attacks have recently briefed law enforcement officials on what can be done in the event of such terrorism. “Los Angeles is one of the first [areas] in the country to get it because we are a large city and there are a lot of potential targets here,” said FBI bomb technician Kevin G. Miles, a nationally known expert in the field.

“From what I have heard, L.A. is the most active area in the United States,” said Lt. George Harris of the LAPD’s Criminal Conspiracy Unit, which investigates the department’s bomb arson cases.

Said Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Spencer: “Between us and LAPD, we are definitely the biggest number of responses in the U.S. . . . I think we are the busiest place in the world.”

*

In a verdant canyon miles from the heart of Los Angeles, law enforcement officers from federal, state and local agencies train often at the sheriff’s arson explosives range.

They know that what they don’t learn can kill them.

Handling blasting caps or huddled in bunkers to see, hear and feel the concussive force of just one pound of C4 explosives, these detectives and beat cops quickly grasp what most of the general public can only imagine:

Even the most harmless-looking devices can be devastating.

A small blasting cap inside a coffee container can blow off a hand; a half-stick of TNT sends out a shock wave and propels a tire 100 feet into the air.

On a recent day, even behind a concrete bunker, the ground rocked from the explosion, 100 yards away, of just 10 pounds of ANFO--a commercial explosive that was used for years by farmers before its application was perverted in the Oklahoma City bombing.

“Whoa!” several officers shouted as the canister detonated.

Later, those officers and their training instructors surveyed the small crater left by the blast, and they were sobered by what they saw.

“This was 10 pounds,” said Sgt. Howard Rechtschaffen, who has spent 21 of his 30 years with the Sheriff’s Department in its bomb squad. “In Oklahoma City, they used 4,800.”

Those sorts of grim observations, and calculations, are made all the time by bomb squad experts, and serve--consciously or not--as a reminder of what they could be up against.

*

By all accounts, the officers are more than holding their own.

With constant training under seasoned supervisors and dedication to a job most anyone would consider too nerve-rattling to endure, Los Angeles’ bomb squads have a stellar safety record in protecting the general public and their own officers.

Not since 1986, when two LAPD detectives were killed by a pipe bomb, have any local law enforcement officers died because of explosive devices, according to local authorities.

Similarly, officials say, any serious injuries to or deaths of civilians in recent years have almost always involved the persons making--or placing--explosive devices.

That does not mean there have not been tragedies.

Four years ago, a dry-ice bomb killed a Korean grocer as he walked into his market south of downtown Los Angeles. “He bled to death in three minutes,” said LAPD Det. Mike Kriha.

A 34-year veteran of the department, Kriha has worked in its Criminal Conspiracy Section, which investigates the LAPD’s bomb cases, since 1983. But years earlier, as a patrol officer, Kriha learned the destructive force of explosives--he lost a hand, and so did his then-partner, when they came upon six sticks of dynamite in a Wilshire-area business.

“I shouldn’t be here talking to you today,” said Kriha, who, like his partner, did not bleed to death only because the heat from the blast cauterized their potentially fatal wounds.

“It can happen; you can be lucky,” he said. “Losing five fingers is not anywhere near losing your life.”

Like others who make their living in arson explosives investigations, Kriha said there is a heightened sense of awareness about the perils that face law enforcement officers in Los Angeles. As such, he said, departments are placing more and more emphasis on readiness.

“Today, the department is actively training and making the officers . . . more knowledgeable” about the risks presented by even the most innocuous of packages, Kriha said.

(One training film shows a Canadian officer blown apart when he kicks a small package sitting next to an alley trash can.)

At the Sheriff’s Department, where bomb squad personnel respond to and investigate incidents, training also is intense.

If one outlasts a long waiting list just to join the 26-person sheriff’s bomb squad, the initial training lasts five weeks at the military’s Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. Twice a year, there is also a one-day recertification exam, and every three years squad members receive a two-week “refresher class” from the FBI in Redstone.

“We’re on the high end [in training],” said Lt. Spencer.

The reasons are obvious.

While 90% of the nation’s 400 bomb squads have part-time staffing, this region has six full-time squads to monitor a vast, ethnically diverse and very mobile population that, by sheer numbers alone, makes it likely that some people will threaten--or commit--bombings.

“If you could just pick up [the region] and shake it, you’d see how volatile it is,” said prosecutor Smalstig. “This county has every nationality on Earth [and] every little country has its own ax to grind, its own hatred of other countries . . . and then you have your assorted nuts. “

Added Spencer: “Twenty years ago . . . you could identify them. Nowadays, it could be anybody. It could be animal rights activists, anti-abortion activists, you name it. And they are planting these things all over the country.”

And, said the FBI’s Miles, even the region’s good weather contributes to Los Angeles’ number of bomb calls. “Before bombers explode something, they practice,” he said.

*

All those factors, plus the availability of formulas for explosives on the Internet, make for a peculiarly potent and dangerous dilemma for local law enforcement--one that experts say they are prepared to meet.

Witness last December’s incident at the Air Force base.

As base spokesman Chet DelSignore noted, U.S. defense facilities have historically put a premium on security. “And in the case of any Air Force facility, training is key to being prepared, and we have done that as far back as I can remember.”

But DelSignore acknowledged that sensitivity to security issues has increased in the wake of terrorist acts, both domestic and international. “I think the level of training may have gone up a bit,” he said, “but the awareness has gone up more so based on real world scenarios.”

The FBI’s Miles agrees.

Referring to last December’s incident at the Air Force base, Miles said: “Prior to the World Trade Center and Oklahoma City, the Air Force personnel probably would never have acted as they did. But they found that truck and to their credit, they handled it like a suspicious vehicle. They did the right thing.”

LAPD Det. Loren Wells, who has spent 19 of his 29 years with that department in its bomb squad, said the heightened awareness seems to be shared by the public.

“In all the years I have been here, we have always run about 600 to 700 calls a year . . . [but] we’ve have over 900 calls a year in the last few years,” Wells said.

“I attribute it to more public awareness. The Unabomber. The World Trade Center. Oklahoma City. When the public sees something that does not look right, they call us, which is what they should do,” Wells said.

Indeed, if there is one lesson that explosives experts attempt to instill in their own troops, it is to treat every suspicious package as if it were deadly.

“Don’t play with it,” the LAPD’s Kriha said he and others tell both officers and civilians about such packages. “If it turns out to be just some clothes or a manuscript, nobody is going to laugh at you for calling the bomb squad. It just means everybody gets to go home safe, that’s all.”

And with constant training and efforts to increase prosecutions in such cases, perhaps with a new specialized unit in the district attorney’s office, many experts are confident the region’s safety record will remain intact.

Even if the number of bomb calls remains high.

“It won’t change here because L.A. is L.A., and all of the factors that make it the bomb capital of America will not go away,” said the FBI’s Miles, who just led another training session for bomb technicians. “People here ought to know that some of the busiest squads in the country, maybe the world, are right here,” he said. Likewise, he said, “Some of the best bomb technicians in the world are right here. And we are lucky to have them.”