Airmen hit ground running during EOD exercise

  • Published
  • By Jake Dorsey
  • Northwest Guardian
JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. --  Air Force Staff Sgt. Bradley Taylor and his team just wanted to push Cory McLellan in the right direction.

"This is (McLellan's) second operation with us," said Taylor, a seasoned bomb technician. "We try to get him to hit the ground running."

The Airman 1st Class was being directed Jan. 16 to a condemned home in the Heartwood Homes area of McChord Field. McLellan, an allegedly quiet Puyallup native, was a team partner for Tech Sgt. Brian Boisselle, flight chief and leader of the 627th Civil Engineer EOD Flight for McChord Field, during the unit's training.

McClellan fresh from the "schoolhouse," the Eglin Air Force Base facility in Florida that plays host to a roughly seven-month course in explosive ordinance disposal for Air Force personnel.

The training opportunity was a unique one, said Lt. Col. Jennifer Phelps, commanding officer of the 627th Civil Engineer Squadron at McChord Field, under which the EOD unit falls.

Equity Residential is razing a large chunk of Hartwood Homes, along with the former Heartwood Elementary School. McChord's fire department was using the homes for training, Phelps said, and the EOD techs wanted the chance to do the same.

The scenario was a stateside-type, said Senior Airman Evan Grimme, in that it involved a disturbed man who booby-trapped his house before being captured by authorities.

Air Force bomb makers set up "devices" around one of the homes, such as a simulated pressure plate linked to a fake shrapnel bomb in a house-mounted mailbox. Bomb makers put the plate below a thin welcome mat in front of the front door, with the expectation the disposal team of Boisselle, McLellan and a Senior Airman would use the bomb disposal robot to attempt to defeat the trap.

Boisselle, instructing Senior Airman Jacob Baker, told him to try and remove the thin mat, which "set off" the bomb. Nothing exploded, but the robot was considered out-of-commission for the rest of the training.

"(The tech) probably is thinking there's stuff in the door frame," Taylor said. "There's a thousand things going through his head ... he probably didn't think this welcome mat was going to be as sensitive as was.

"We kinda did that on purpose," Taylor said, laughing.

Jokes aside, it's all in the name of learning, and not just for newcomers like McLellan. After the robot was put out of commission, Boisselle donned the large green bomb suit to explore the rest of the house. McLellan became Boisselle's watcher, moving into new positions when instructed and acting as a sounding board for Boisselle.

He needed it. Not only was the robot "destroyed," but so was the chance to enter through the front door.

"You do need to enter the scene," Grimme said. "This angle of attack is out of play now, but you can attack from different angles. And that's only limited by the imagination." After Boisselle rounded behind the house and tested a sliding glass door, he almost set off another booby trap -- a wire connected to the door that would have set off a Coke-and-Mentos "bomb" sure to soak the suit.

Getting through wasn't going to be easy, as the trap had a hair-trigger and there was no robot left to remotely engage it.

As EOD teammates and visiting Army EOD staff watched, Boisselle silently attached to the door a glass-breaking device called a centerpunch, usually reserved for car windows. Phelps said the tool is similar to a glass punch, with a long rope attached to it so the bomb technician can remotely activate it.

After reaching a safe distance behind a fence, Boisselle and McLellan activated it. The experience indeed was a learning one, as the EOD techs saw that the punch splintered, but didn't fully penetrate, the glass.

Staff Sgt. Derek Wood, who developed the scenario with Taylor, said the glass was thicker, but the plastic lamination also kept the glass from shattering and falling down.

Boisselle and McLellan decided to simply open the door and set off the trap. The technical sergeant tied the glass-breaker's rope around a vertical gutter, went back to his original position and pulled the door open.

When he came back, he was greeted with Coke spilled on the floor.

As Boisselle finished up his check of the house for more traps, Phelps said the EOD team would undertake more training in the houses before they were wrecked.

"These guys have never been able to do this," Phelps said. "This is a first for just about everybody out here."