FORT SHAFTER — The Army's explosive ordnance disposal team in Hawai'i will quadruple in size by 2010 and continue as the military's main response to civilian requests for help with suspicious packages, unexploded bullets, hand grenades and bombs.

The existing 23 soldiers who make up the Army's highly specialized 706th Ordnance Co. (EOD) are scheduled to be joined by another 23-soldier company by 2009, then grow to 100 soldiers by 2010, when they will add a new battalion headquarters at Schofield Barracks.

Currently, there are only 1,100 soldiers in the elite world of Army ordnance disposal work, said Sgt. 1st Class Billy Garner, the 706th's platoon sergeant.

The 706th already outnumbers much smaller Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps explosive ordnance units in the Islands, said Army Maj. Stephen Kavanaugh, commander of the 8th TSC EOD Control Team, the battalion headquarters for the 706th EOD.

It remains the primary contact for police and other civilian agencies that want the military's help in identifying possible threats and getting rid of them.

This week, members of the 706th sailed to Moloka'i on a Coast Guard ship to remove discarded military ordnance at the Moloka'i landfill for the second time in a week.

The team found scrap metal at the landfill similar to the more than 100 artillery shells and other items discovered there last week, causing Maui County officials to temporarily close the landfill again.

Two weeks earlier, a team was dispatched to Lahaina, where a suspicious-looking can of Coke wrapped in electrical tape was discovered next to a garbage can outside a Blockbuster video store in the middle of the night.

What looked like wires poking out of the can turned out to be string.

And the soldiers used an X-ray machine to determine that nothing harmful was inside.

About half of the unit's 90 or so missions each year occur outside of military lands in Hawai'i, Kavanaugh said.

Fewer than five of the cases each year involve something that could harm somebody, he said.

"It can be an old hand grenade from World War II," Kavanaugh said. "But very seldom do we find something that provides a danger."

In some cases, however, the threat is real, like the string of pipe bombs the unit detonated on Maui in 2001.

The soldiers of the 706th may pull on a bomb disposal suit, pull out an X-ray machine or deploy one of two robots to detonate the devices — the same equipment and techniques they use in war zones like Iraq and Afghanistan to detonate roadside bombs and unexploded artillery shells.

Garner, a 16-year-veteran of the Army, returned from a six-month deployment in Mosul, Iraq, in December and said, "the only difference here is that no one's shooting at us."

The 706th Ordnance Co. began on Jan. 30, 1943 as the 6th Ordnance Bomb Disposal Squad, Separate. It was activated on Feb. 19 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

In the decades that followed, the unit was renamed, reorganized, deactivated and reactivated several times in several different incarnations.

A version of the bomb disposal squad was activated in March 25, 1959 at Fort Shafter, then reorganized and redesignated as the 706th Ordnance Co. on June 16, 1997.

A few years later, Matthew Slatcher was a young soldier in Alaska when he saw his first ordnance team in action.

A hand grenade failed to detonate on a training range and the rest of the soldiers had to stay back as the ordnance team deactivated the grenade.

Slatcher, now a sergeant with the 706th, was instantly hooked.

"That was my first experience and it was pretty awesome," Slatcher said. "I thought, 'Who are these guys and why are they so special?' "

Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com.