OCEAN CITY A bomb scare on
the beach last Friday turned out to
be a non-hazardous object but
nonetheless protocol was followed
and robotic equipment was
deployed.
Around 6 p.m. last Friday, the
Ocean City Beach Patrol (OCBP)
called in a suspicious device to the
Ocean City Police Department (OC-
PD) and the resort's Fire and Bomb
Squad responded to the beach in
the area between 122nd and 123rd
streets.
OCBP had cleared a small per-
imeter when it found an object sit-
ting on a wooden chair on the
beach, and waited for the Fire and
Bomb squad to arrive.
According to Deputy Chief David
Hartley, when a suspicious object is
found on the beach, OCBP follows
protocol and contacts OCPD, who
then follows through with a threat
assessment. If OCPD is uncomfort-
able with the object as well, that is
when the Fire and Bomb Squad is
called in.
When Deputy Fire Chief David
Hartley received the call, he was
downtown at a briefing for the Dew
Tour. Upon receiving the call, the
squad reached uptown quickly and
released robotic equipment to get a
look at the object from afar.
"We were able to determine with
the robot that it was non-hazardous
... if we sent the robot down and we
couldn't determine what it was, then
we would elevate the concern from
there," he said.
Hartley is under the assumption
the object was found and placed on
the chair but once examining the
concern closer the object turned out
to what is believed to be a marine
audio speaker.
The section of the beach was
closed for 25 minutes until the ob-
ject was safely removed.
"That is something that most
people wouldn't identify quickly, and
then being left unattended on a
wooden chair, I think that was what
raised suspicions from the beach
patrol," he said.
According to Hartley, bomb scares
become more frequent in the resort
during the summer months, particu-
larly when tragic incidents are occur-
ring nationally and internationally.
"People become more suspicious
when there are a lot of things in the
news. I would say two to three times
a summer we end going to the
beach whether it is an abandoned
suitcase, backpack or cooler. We
have been there for everything and
we have had actual devices found
on the beach as well," he said.
In July 2009, a large section of
the beach in Ocean City at 40th
Street was evacuated when a pri-
vate citizen uncovered what ap-
peared to be a pipe bomb in the
sand.
The citizen reported the discov-
ery to the OCBP, which then con-
tacted the OCPD. The area was
evacuated for about an hour while
bomb squad technicians, using ro-
botic equipment, removed the sus-
picious device from the beach.
Prior to that incident, a private cit-
izen using a metal detector on the
beach uncovered a homemade
hand grenade of sorts buried in the
sand at 103rd Street.
During that same month, police
served a warrant on a local resident
at his home and discovered the
makings of IEDs including plastic
PVC pipes with fixed caps on the
end including fuses, a gallon con-
tainer of gunpowder and a spool of
hobby fuses. The suspect had earli-
er threatened to blow up a vehicle.
In July of 2008, resort police
found an IED in the form of a home-
made hand grenade wrapped in
black electrical tape in the center
console of a vehicle they had been
pulled over for a routine traffic stop.
In December 2007, nearly 300
commercial-grade fireworks were
found on the beach just north of the
Maryland line, the largest of which
was over eight pounds.
Robot Probes Suspicious Package
An Ocean City Bomb Squad robot was brought to the beach near 123rd
Street last Friday to investigate a suspicious package that was discovered.
Photo by Glen Casalaspro
Page 10
June 28, 2013
The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch
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