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Bomb Squad Does Training on College Campus
A bomb squad was at the campus of Western Illinois University in Macomb Thursday. But it was only a test.

The Illinois Secretary of State Police Bomb Squad used some now-closed apartments on the Macomb campus to carry out bomb squad training. They are required to train 16 hours a month, and will conclude that monthly training Friday, using things like robots and bomb-sniffing dogs to try and detect fake bombs.

Doug Brinkley is one of the investigators, and tells WGIL once crews find a bomb, they have to make sure it won't harm anyone.

"What you want to is defeat the bomb, so it explodes or goes off in a different way than was intended by the bomb maker," Brinkley said. "You're trying to defeat it, or disrupt it. That's kind of the nuts and bolts of it. TV has got the whole 'Is it the red wire? Is it the blue wire?' It's really not so much like that."

Brinkley says they used Western for this round of training because of the relationship that was developed with the school after a series of phony bomb threats were called in to mostly residence halls in late 2010.

He says bomb sniffing dog handlers get a lot of threats that don't necessarily require the use of a full bomb squad, however.


(A bomb-sniffing dog practices detecting explosives at WIU's Lamoine Village.)


(A robot used during the training.)


(The bomb squad's command post.)


(The robot is operated from inside command post. WGIL News Story and Photos by Will Stevenson.)
02 15 13 by Newsroom
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