Pipe Bombs Explode; Both Real and Imagined

Excerpted from EmergencyNet NEWS Service Daily Report
Friday, August 2, 1996
Vol. 2 - 215

PIPE BOMBINGS EXPLODE: BOTH REAL AND IMAGINED
By Alijandra Mogilner

The 28 July shutdown of San Jose airport because of a bomb hoax was only one of dozens of such copycat bomb incidents, either real or fake, in California following the bombing at the Olympics in Atlanta and the probable attack on TWA Flight 800 in New York.

The San Jose airport was shut down for about 30 minutes after a flight attendant for Alaska Airlines found a note on a food tray that read "Bomb on board" during a flight from Portland. All 128 passengers and 12 crew members were taken off the plane and their luggage was searched after landing in San Jose. The airport shut down inconvenienced hundreds of flyers and cost the airport and airlines a substantial amount of money.

Meanwhile, San Francisco area law enforcement groups had to deal with several bomb scares on 30 July. The San Francisco Hall of Justice was partially evacuated for an hour after the district attorney's office received a bomb threat that had been telephoned to a local television station. The call was a hoax. In the town of Moss Beach in San Matero County, the sheriff's bomb squad investigated a suspected paper bag bomb outside a grocery store. The contents consisted of road flares, a shotgun shell and a fake trigger. The city of San Rafael had several "bottle bombs" actually explode at an industrial park during the lunch hour. There was no damage caused by the bombs.

Police public affairs officers in the Bay Area say such a rash of fake bombs are to be expected after a highly publicized attack, such as the one in Atlanta. After the Oklahoma City Bombing, there were over 200 threats to federal buildings recorded. However, police, fire and other emergency services must take threats seriously and they cost everyone a great deal in both time and money.

However, law officers in San Diego County, some 800 miles south of San Francisco, are not taking bomb scares so calmly. There have been an increasing number of very real bombing incidents in the area this year, and pipe bombs are by far the most popular device used.

San Diego Police logged a "normal" number of bomb calls over the weekend: four on Saturday and one on Sunday. But Saturday was much busier for the sheriff's department. They had a very real pipe bomb to defuse. It measured 4 inches by 2 1/2 inches and was found about a mile from the Olympic training facility in Chula Vista.

"We opened it up, and it was a live pipe bomb," Sgt. Conrad Grayson, head of the Sheriff's Department bomb and arson squad, said.

On average, sheriff's investigators handle about 350 bomb calls a year, of which about 70 percent are pipe bombs or other explosive devices, Grayson said. The remainder are either fake telephoned threats, or suspicious packages, some of which are destroyed with an explosive countercharge. The last few years have seen an increase in the number of pipe-bomb makers who wrap the devices with nails and other sharp objects to "guarantee a shrapnel zone," Grayson said.

"It's starting to get crazy out there," said Grayson. "The last few summers have been fairly routine, but right now bombs are on a lot of people's minds."

The most notorious local pipe-bomb incident was the 1989 blast on La Jolla Village Drive that destroyed the van of Sharon Rogers, wife of the skipper of the U.S. Navy cruiser Vincennes after the vessel had shot down an Iranian airliner. The case was never solved.

Grayson says the most likely type of person to build pipe bombs are those that have a lot of guns at home and wear camouflage. "They like to play soldier." According to Grayson, people who build pipe bombs are almost always white males who fall into two main groups:

-- Teens from 13 to 17, especially 14-year-olds, who for some reason are particularly fascinated with explosives. "They make the most bombs and take the most chances," he
said.

-- Adults, mostly in the 21-41 age range. "These are boy- men, the guys who don't grow up," Grayson said.

Criminologists from San Francisco State University emphasize that there is a big difference between people who plant bombs and people who make idle threats to plant bombs. "A person who actually plants a bomb is typically looking for revenge,'' says Michael Rustigan a professor of criminology at SFSU. "Their motivation may be quite abstract -- a grudge against the government or `foreigners,' and a desire to strike back at them. They harbor a great deal of deep hostility, even rage.''

Crank callers making bomb threats, on the other hand, tend to be young males who are ``idle and bored, looking for kicks,'' said Rustigan. "They make the threat, they see the results of the fuss they caused on the news, and they enjoy a great sense of power, of self-worth.''

Rustigan said pipe bombers may cause less damage individually than people who set off truly huge bombs, but that they are collectively just as dangerous.

"Eighty percent of the bombs that are exploded in this country are pipe bombs,'' said Rustigan. ``Both the materials and the instructions are ubiquitous. We worry about international terrorism, but the real threat is right here -- it's homegrown. There are thousands of people across this country who know how to make and use these devices.''

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