Army believes dynamite may have been lost on base
By Scott Ishikawa
and William Cole
Advertiser Staff Writers
WAHIAWA — The Army is focusing its search for a missing stick of dynamite inside Schofield Barracks, after a re-creation of the incident yesterday showed it may not have gone far after a soldier unwittingly drove off with it, officials said.
Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser
But the Army and police will continue to also search Wahiawa at least until this afternoon for the yellow,
Searchers looked under cars on North Cane Street yesterday as military crews went through the area looking for a explosive device that was lost during a Schofield Barracks dog-training exercise Thursday.
9-inch-long explosive that managed to leave a closed training area Thursday.
On the second day of the search yesterday, Army officials:
• Acknowledged that procedures broke down during a training exercise for bomb-sniffing dogs.
• Downplayed the danger posed by the explosive, a commercial grade of dynamite under the brand name Dyno Nobel.
• Said any decision on disciplinary action would be made after the investigation is completed.
"We're going to be looking at everything that took place," said Col. Arnaldo Claudio, provost marshal for U.S. Army, Hawai'i. "This is a serious event."
The sight of soldiers scouring bushes, curbs and gutters in Wahiawa had some residents and other civilians a little uneasy yesterday.
"At first, I thought what they were doing was some kind of training or drills," said Naomi Delos Santos, who was visiting a friend at a house off Olive Avenue. "It's kind of hard to believe how something like that got lost."
The incident happened about 1:30 p.m. Thursday, when soldiers were training dogs to detect explosives placed in the undercarriage of cars parked in a lot on base for impounded for vehicles.
The dogs successfully found four sticks of Dyno Nobel, Claudio said. But before they could find the fifth and final one, the car's owner — described only as a male soldier — claimed his car from the impound lot and drove away.
The man drove about five miles, to just past a Chevron station in Wahiawa, when military police reached him on his cell phone and he drove back to the base, Claudio said. It was not clear whether the car was searched at the gas station or back at the base.
"He had shown the MPs the proper paperwork to pick up his vehicle and was escorted to the lot in an MP vehicle," Claudio said.
Authorities say anyone finding the explosive device should call 911 or Schofield miliary police at 655-7114.
Claudio said the K9 testing is done daily at the impound lot because it is fenced-in and somewhat isolated from the rest of base facilities. Signs are posted that testing is taking place, and no one was supposed to have been allowed onto the lot, he said.
Where to call if you find it
Claudio said an investigation is under way to find out why someone was not watching the vehicle and to determine whether procedures should be changed. He said the car was the only one, out of about 280 there, to leave the lot during the training exercise.
Yesterday, Army investigators used that car — a maroon, four-door Oldsmobile Cutlass — to re-create the event and see where the explosive may have fallen off the car.
They made a number of runs at varying speeds, tracing the man's route. Nearly every time an object similar to the dynamite rolled off the undercarriage as the car made turns not far from the impound lot, Claudio said.
"After conducting our tests, and seeing where the device rolled out, it's very remote it fell out after that far a distance (into Wahiawa)," he said.
But he and other had no explanation for why the real thing was not found where the test objects fell.
Claudio said troops since Thursday have scoured the Schofield route 22 times, and the Wahiawa portion about 15 times.
"As for the Wahiawa area we have gone through every inch and we are pretty much discounting that the device is along the (public roadways)," Claudio said.
The Army also dismantled part of the Cutlass to see if the dynamite was inside. It wasn't.
An Army explosives expert yesterday said the explosive is potentially dangerous, but not volatile as others had warned on Thursday.
Maj. Gerry Muhl, commander of the U.S. Army Pacific Explosives Ordnance Disposal Control Team, said the device can be ignited only by using a detonator cap.
"Simply running over it with a vehicle will not detonate it. Picking it up will not detonate it," Muhl said.
But if set off, the device needs a safe zone of at least 300 feet, Muhl said.
A private explosives expert said one should still use caution.
Unlike military explosives like C-4 — which, according to handling data, can be hit by a bullet and not explode — "dynamites are not that resistant to shock," said Pat Shea, chief operating officer for the Ancore Corp., a Santa Clara, Calif., firm specializing in explosives detection. "Dynamites can be set off by shocks not as violent."
Asked how dangerous such an explosive is, Shea said: "You would not want to have it go off in your hands — most likely the person would be killed."
Dyno Nobel, with North American headquarters in Salt Lake City, is a global explosives supplier and developer with roots back to Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite.
Old dynamite, like that used 80 years ago, would sweat nitroglycerine crystals that would make the explosive highly volatile, but the modern equivalent is much more stable, he said.
Shea said that if the explosive remains exposed to the elements, including rain, it will probably lose its covering but the nitrogen-based chemical ingredients that leak out would become diluted and inert.
