› Forums › Geocaching in Wisconsin › General › Bomb squad checking device at Retzer Nature Center
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gotta run.
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03/25/2009 at 4:10 pm #1727966
Bomb squad checking device at Retzer Nature Center
By Jacqui Seibel of the Journal SentinelMar. 25, 2009 10:12 a.m. | The Milwaukee County Bomb Squad is at Retzer Nature Center after an employee found a suspicious device in a remote parking lot, Waukesha County Sheriff’s Detective Steve Pederson said.
The device is a galvanized pipe with end caps, Pederson said. There is also evidence in the area that other similar devices may have been blown up, he said.
The suspicious device is not near any buildings, Pederson said.
Wales/Genesee Fire Department is also on the scene.
This “device” does NOT match any cache that I know of at Retzer… and it sounds like it may be a real bomb. So not all these bomb squad calls are false alarms. And this should be a lesson as to why it is good idea not to use any type of pipe with end caps (PVC, galvanized, etc.) as a cache container.
03/25/2009 at 4:14 pm #1904467Sounds like the blew it up now, from the picture one might assume it was out in the open …
03/25/2009 at 4:21 pm #1904468…and the million $ question….was there a Geocaching.com sticker on it?
Yeiks! Real pipebombs are NOT good. I know of at least one cache in the park which resembles (ed) a pipe….though I think it was PVC.
Could very well be the real deal…
03/25/2009 at 4:39 pm #1904469Just looked at the caches in Retzer. All 3 of the physical caches are owned by The Tapps. 2 are nanos, and one is a film can, so unless someone placed something that has not yet been approved we can be pretty sure that this was not a geocache.
That doesn mean that it was necessarily a bomb either, but bomb squads and emergency service workers have to assume that anything that might be a bomb is a bomb, until proven otherwise.
zuma
03/25/2009 at 4:41 pm #1904470I was on the phone with Holly Glainyk first thing this morning because the only geocaches there currently are The Tapps. I relayed the type of known geocaches there which are the pinecone and film canisters.
So, unless it was an unpublished one .. it was not a geocache.
03/25/2009 at 4:45 pm #1904471Lostby7 – the PVC pipe under the boardwalk was archived and removed some time ago for this very reason – so it would not be mistaken for a pipe bomb.
I got confirmation on the phone from The Tapps/ Brian that he did not have any “lost” versions of that one in the park.
If I hear anything back from Holly, I will post it ..
03/25/2009 at 4:46 pm #1904472@AuntieNae wrote:
Lostby7 – the PVC pipe under the boardwalk was archived and removed some time ago for this very reason – so it would not be mistaken for a pipe bomb.
I got confirmation on the phone from The Tapps/ Brian that he did not have any “lost” versions of that one in the park.
If I hear anything back from Holly, I will post it ..
…for a moment I thought my recall was slipping. Thanks for the info. This looks possibly like a real bomb.
03/25/2009 at 4:47 pm #1904473Yeah, from the photo, it had to be just off the parking lot. The nearest geocache would be the pinecone nano .. hardly could be mistaken for a pipe ..
Holly is in a meeting right now. All the Waukesha County rangers had a meeting this morning.
03/25/2009 at 4:49 pm #1904474I suspect this was the real deal .. I have been in contact with the Waukesha City Parks about the upcoming CITO event and will mention to Pete that none of the containers in his parks look like pipe bombs ..
03/25/2009 at 4:51 pm #1904475I’m guessing that it may be some sick practical joke. Possibly hatched by someone who heard about last weeks incident in Allouez? I just hope that if it is, it wasn’t a cacher who did this.
03/25/2009 at 5:11 pm #1904476I just watched the TV report here locally about the incedent. There was no mention of geocaching and it was a 20 second brief report. Fortunately the news media here is reporting responsibly so far.
03/25/2009 at 9:50 pm #1904477When I heard the blurb on the TV about “blah blah blah pipe bomb blah blah blah Retzers“, I feared this was another Allouez incident all over – though after thinking about it, I couldn’t think of any caches there that could possibly be mistaken for one.
While having a potentially dangerous device (I think I can use that word here) there is obviously a very bad thing, I’m a bit relieved it wasn’t a cache this time.
03/26/2009 at 1:14 am #1904478@LightningBugs Mum wrote:
While having a potentially dangerous device (I think I can use that word here) there is obviously a very bad thing, I’m a bit relieved it wasn’t a cache this time.
This disturbs me more than the Alouez incident… A lot more. When a harmless geocache gets exploded, it causes some excitement for a while and then dies off. A real pipe bomb in a park, besides being obviously dangerous, is going to cause everyone to be more paranoid about any abandon container or object that they can’t identify.
03/27/2009 at 11:35 am #1904479Hey Renee, you hear anything more on the bomb squad incident out there by you? I didn’t see anything in the paper about it or anything more on tv.
03/27/2009 at 6:41 pm #1904480@zuma wrote:
That doesn’t mean that it was necessarily a bomb either, but bomb squads and emergency service workers have to assume that anything that might be a bomb is a bomb, until proven otherwise.
zuma
And again, agreed. If something “looks” like a pipe bomb, treat it as such. Any geocacher making containers out of metal pipe and end caps should re-consider. However, PVC type containers, while suspicious, do not make for very effective bombs and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a plastic bomb in any news footage that I know of. I could be wrong. I can also understand if someone happens across a PVC tube with caps and jumps to that very reasonable conclusion. This is all sound common sense in my book.
However, I am a little less forgiving of bomb squad personnel that can’t identify a string vs a wick. String is string and det cord is det cord. Ok, so some 8yr old might think that string makes for a good wick, but that’s really stretching it.I do think that some measure should be taken by the BOD, or a sub-committee or an interested party to assemble a “Geocaching” brief that describes the sport in detail, gives information about how to look up caches on the website and describes the most common containers used in the sport. This brief could then be e-mailed in PDF form to all State Police, Fire, DNR, departments and any other entity that might have reason to be well informed. In this way, we are at least showing a willingness to stem the mis-information about the sport and provide these entities with a means to identify suspicious “devices” as such or not in the future.
That, and sticking some kind of label on the cache is a good idea too. Just with the ones that are sold weren’t so expensive…
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