North Texas bomb squads join national explosives training in Mineral Wells

Bomb technicians Jack Kessler and Jase Smith have a simple goal on every call: a quiet resolution.

Kessler has reached that goal for 25 years as a member of the North East (Tarrant) Explosives Response Team, and Smith has done it for six years.

“My family thought I was crazy when I first joined the squad,” Smith said Wednesday. Smith and Kessler are firefighters/paramedics with the North Richland Hills Fire Department when they’re not working as bomb technicians.

They said that one key to their success has been training and working with other federal, state and area bomb squads to sharpen their skills at handling explosive devices.

That’s why they and dozens of other explosives experts are at Fort Wolters this week for an annual joint training exercise focused on improvised explosive devices.

Raven’s Challenge Interoperability Exercise is a partnership of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Army. It incorporates scenarios that local bomb squads and military explosive ordnance disposal teams could face in the field.

“Raven’s Challenge is not primarily designed to evaluate the tactical proficiency of the units involved,” program manger John Simpson said. He said the focus is to get different bomb squads together to improve their ability to work together and to expose them to new problems.

“We’re able to take their experience and use it,” Kessler said of working side by side with an Army bomb disposal team from Fort Hood in Killeen. “And we can show them what we use.”

Through Friday, 15 bomb squad teams comprising military units and local bomb squads are tackling improvised mortar tubes found in a vehicle and a cabin; hostages in a bus with a suspect with an explosive device strapped to him; screening venues for explosive devices; and a booby-trapped cabin.

The local squads include teams from Fort Worth, Irving, Denton, Dallas, Dallas/Fort Worth Airport police and the North East Explosives Response team.

“The Fort Worth Fire Department continues to maintain heightened preparedness and response level due to increased terrorist activity at the international level,” Fort Worth fire Lt. Kyle Falkner said Thursday in an email.

From 2013 through 2015, the Fort Worth bomb squad worked 664 explosives cases, according to the Fire Department.

The calls included bomb threats, suspicious packages, explosives pickup and disposal, and explosives detection K-9 assignments. The dog unit responds to preventive sweeps for dignitaries and assistance calls with Fort Worth police.

Last year, the training event reached more than 1000 law officers and military technicians from the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and Australia.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 1:25 PM with the headline "North Texas bomb squads join national explosives training in Mineral Wells."