The Nebraska State Patrol's bomb squad investigates any call from a suspicious package to an old wartime explosive device. While finding a bomb is uncommon, it's not as rare as someone might think. "This is an old hand grenade. This is a bazooka round, and this is a rifle fire grenade put on the end of a barrel to shoot it," Sgt. Clayton Dishong said. NSP bomb squad responds to an average of 84 calls every year."Twenty percent of those have been military ordinances, and about 20% of those have been live," Dishong said. Dishong is the NSP's bomb squad commander. He said they have several different tools to safely determine if an ordinance is live or not."This is the X-ray panel, this is what the image will be captured on," Dishong said. "We can modify the image a little bit and get a good idea of what's inside. What we're looking for is how dense inside of there. If there are explosives still in there." When they don't want to pick up a potentially dangerous device, one of their robots comes into play. "There's multiple cameras on there, one in the front, one in the back and one on the claw itself," Dishong said. It is able to get right up on the target and even open up cardboard boxes to reveal what's inside. "In this instance, we would remove this stick of dynamite from the box," Dishong said. NSP has five of those small robots with two more on the way, but if there's a scene where the smaller bot cannot get to, investigators will bring in a much larger version. "We would use this in conjunction with the bomb suit sometimes," Dishong said. "These are designed to protect you from the frag over pressure any fire, anything like that." What should you do if you come across a potentially dangerous device?"First and foremost, don't touch it. Get away from it if you can," Dishong said. "Call 911 and they will get ahold of us." Click here for the latest headlines from KETV NewsWatch 7
The Nebraska State Patrol's bomb squad investigates any call from a suspicious package to an old wartime explosive device.
While finding a bomb is uncommon, it's not as rare as someone might think.
"This is an old hand grenade. This is a bazooka round, and this is a rifle fire grenade put on the end of a barrel to shoot it," Sgt. Clayton Dishong said.
NSP bomb squad responds to an average of 84 calls every year.
"Twenty percent of those have been military ordinances, and about 20% of those have been live," Dishong said.
Dishong is the NSP's bomb squad commander. He said they have several different tools to safely determine if an ordinance is live or not.
"This is the X-ray panel, this is what the image will be captured on," Dishong said. "We can modify the image a little bit and get a good idea of what's inside. What we're looking for is how dense inside of there. If there are explosives still in there."
When they don't want to pick up a potentially dangerous device, one of their robots comes into play.
"There's multiple cameras on there, one in the front, one in the back and one on the claw itself," Dishong said.
It is able to get right up on the target and even open up cardboard boxes to reveal what's inside.
"In this instance, we would remove this stick of dynamite from the box," Dishong said.
NSP has five of those small robots with two more on the way, but if there's a scene where the smaller bot cannot get to, investigators will bring in a much larger version.
"We would use this in conjunction with the bomb suit sometimes," Dishong said. "These are designed to protect you from the frag over pressure any fire, anything like that."
What should you do if you come across a potentially dangerous device?
"First and foremost, don't touch it. Get away from it if you can," Dishong said. "Call 911 and they will get ahold of us."