The Bomb Squad Comes to the Copper Valley
A case of dynamite found on a property in the Copper Basin. Photo courtesy of Jeff Morton.
By Allison Sayer
Note: We have kept some details out of this story to respect the property owner’s request to remain anonymous.
On October 20, a multiagency team with members from the Alaska Department of Public Safety, the FBI, Ted Stevens Airport Police and Fire, State DNR Copper River Forestry, the Fort Wainwright 65th Ordnance Company, and the Gakona Volunteer Fire Department converged on a private property south of Glennallen. Their objective was to safely destroy cases of dynamite that had been found in a trailer.
I spoke with Jeff Morton to learn more about this operation and about abandoned explosives that might still exist in caches around the state. Morton is a Deputy Fire Marshall III from the Alaska Department of Public Safety, and a member of one of the three public safety bomb squads in Alaska.
Team members first visited the site almost a year ago, when the property owner reported finding cases labeled as dynamite in an old trailer.
Contemporary dynamite is made using ammonia. However, the label on these cases said: “September, 1957.” The older, nitroglycerin-based dynamite, will “sweat” out the nitroglycerin if it is not used within a year or two of its manufacture. “You’re going to see big drops of what looks like standing water on top of the dynamite,” said Morton, “At some point that’s going to crystallize and be raw nitroglycerin, like rock candy. Those crystals become incredibly sensitive to shock and friction.”
The bomb squad believed that the dynamite had sweated a sufficient quantity of nitroglycerin to glue the cases to the floor, and to each other. “If we started to move it around we could inadvertently set it off,” said Morton. The team felt it was safest to burn the dynamite, and the trailer in which it was found, in place. Morton said the homeowner was “gracious enough to let it go.”
The bomb squad made arrangements to come back this fall, when the weather was likely to be favorable. Extreme heat and extreme cold both make the dynamite more dangerous to deal with. Cold makes the substance more brittle, with the potential to fracture. The team also had to coordinate their own availability, as each one of them has a full time job in another public safety capacity.
The bomb squad soaked the dynamite in diesel, which actually makes the dynamite less reactive by disrupting the crystallization. That process, called “desensitizing,” made it somewhat safer to remove other items from the trailer before ignition. That removal preserved some of the owner’s property and also reduced the amount of toxic emissions from burning plastic or other materials.
The diesel brought the burn up to temperature in a more controlled way than a detonation. The hope was that the nitroglycerin would slowly fuel the fire rather than explode all at once. In this case, “Thankfully, everything worked like it was supposed to,” said Morton.
The fire was ignited using a remote system with all personnel a safe distance from the trailer. During the ignition and peak of the burn, the local road was closed. The fire was allowed to burn until everything was consumed. “You don’t want to fight one of these fires,” said Morton, “It could go kaboom.”
Where did the dynamite come from? Morton said it’s not particularly uncommon for people to have dynamite on their property for “legitimate” purposes such as getting rid of stumps, backwoods landscaping, or small-scale mining. In this instance, the dynamite had been used for clearing. A box of unused dynamite can be “put in a place in the garage and they don’t see it for 25 years.”
Frighteningly enough, Morton listed numerous other places people in Alaska have found old explosives. These include storage units, the trunk of an abandoned car, a tree stump on a public trail near a newly constructed dam, old mining sites, and old construction sites. He even recalled one instance where spools of detonation cord were placed inside an auction house because it was thought to be rope, and another where a private pilot returned to a hangar with a World War II Japanese grenade. He summed it up: “You never know.”
Morton would like to remind the public that if they find anything that looks suspicious, they should not even touch the container. Instead, try to isolate the area and call the local authorities or troopers. He added he would rather receive a hundred false alarms than have anyone get hurt, and there is no cost associated with having a bomb squad member come out to assess potential explosives.
The property owner who found the dynamite would like to remind families to ensure their curious children do not enter abandoned buildings, “because you never know what unknown dangerous items could be found there.”
Morton said there were many things in the bomb squad’s favor for the October 20 burn. The private property was Firewise, which aided the operation greatly. “We encourage everyone to be Firewise on their property,” said Morton. Local Forestry assessments of wildland fire risk were utilized by the team in their decision making and planning process. “Your local Forestry does an incredible job,” he said.
Morton was also grateful to have local first responders standing by. “The local first responders really do a bang up job,” he said. He went on to say the team felt “fortunate to have The Tazlina hotshots, Forestry technicians, State Troopers, and a good mix of other local responders” in the area. Morton called this operation “one of the best experiences I’ve had in terms of local coordination. Everybody in Glennallen was extremely helpful. It’s huge to have additional resources there to stabilize if something goes wrong.” He added, “I also highly recommend your local pizza.”
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