My visit with the bomb squad

[+travisl]

I met with Washington State Patrol Trooper Mark Soper today (he's with the Olympia Explosives Unit). He said he'd be happy to take any questions at msoper at wsp.wa.gov. He explained to me their process, and I told him that I'd share what he said with the WaGeocacing list, this forum, and the General forum.

 

There are four State Patrol bomb squad units in the state, and they meet every three months with other local bomb squads. He has placed a discussion of geocaching on the agenda for their next meeting. He has also contacted his colleagues in Oregon, and let them know about geocaches. He was surprised there were so many of them.

 

Their process for a bomb call is, understandably, to treat every device as ift it were a bomb. They'll X-ray it, and if they can't get a good image of what's inside, they'll destroy it with blasts of water. Regardless, they'll remove whatever it is, because if it's not a bomb, they have to treat it as abandoned property. So this leads me to my first lesson learned.

 

Lesson 1: Hide it well.

 

He said that it would be most useful if we could place a known logo on the outside of our cache containers, along with a contact name and phone number. I immediately thought of the "Official Geocache" stickers that Groundspeak sells, but those don't have a space for a phone number. They'd still have to remove the cache if they found it though, and would probably treat it the same way, but they'd have someone to call to find out about it.

 

Lesson 2: Provide contact information and the geocaching logo on the outside of the cache.

 

The story behind this call was interesting. On Sunday, March 3, a geocacher in a vehicle with California plates stopped at the rest area. A citizen watched the geocacher get out, look at their GPS, and head over behind a tree. Suddenly, the geocacher ducked down behind the tree, did something for a few minutes, then ran back to their vehicle and drove away quickly.

 

The person watching this thought it was odd, but didn't do anything. They mentioned it to a co-worker on Monday, March 4, and on Tuesday, March 5, he and his co-worker returned to the site. They found the cache, saw "I Hate I-5 XXV" written on it, and called 9-1-1.

 

It never occurred to me that the name of the cache would cause alarm, particularly since 24 other caches with the same name had been hidden without incident. I never thought about it. To keep that from happening again, I've come up with another lesson.

 

Lesson 3: Don't write the name of the cache on the outside of the cache.

 

Trooper Soper also mentioned the tupperware geocache that had been blown up in Nevada. I don't know if he'd heard about it before or after they'd found this one, though.

 

The silver lining of this is that the bomb squads in this state now are aware of geocaching, and will be able to breathe a tiny bit easier once the next one is reported to them. They'll still remove it, though, and in the interest of public safety, will still need to treat it as if it were a bomb.

[+Renegade Knight]

There is a problem here. I'm originally from Alaska where trap lines were ran and I even knew trappers. Traps are set and visited on a periodic basis and maintained. They are not abandoned property. Geocaches are also not abandoned property if maintained. We need to work with agencies on that. I've placed one and checked up on it several times since placing it. The point is, while we can do the bomb squad a favor by making caches identifiable as such, they can do us a favor and not remove them (and thereby steal our property) for no particularly good reason. As a rule I will not put my phone number and name on a cache. I'm willing to put a code number on it that would allow a peace officer to call and get my info after properly identifying himself. I've also made efforts to work with our local sherrifs office as they have taken the time to check up on one of the cachers trying to find my cache. No progress on that front yet.