BOMB CART IS FINEST
Trailer hauls off trouble
IT’S THE bomb.
The NYPD showed off a slick piece of machinery in a video released Sunday, as Lt. Mark Torre gave a cybertour of the vehicle that hauled away an explosive the Chelsea bomber planted on W. 27th St. this month, on the same night another bomb exploded and injured 29 people.
Called a “total containment vessel,” the equipment is hitched to a police truck and is designed to absorb the blast of an explosive if it detonates while officers are removing it, said Torre, the commanding officer of the NYPD’s bomb squad.
“If a bomb were to explode inside there, the pressure would bleed off in a series of events,” Torre said in the video tweeted by the NYPD. “But all the fragmentation that would be associated with it, and of course the blast pressure shockwave, it’s contained.”
The NYPD has three TCVs located throughout the five boroughs to be deployed at a moment’s notice, counterterrorism Chief James Waters told the Daily News.
When explosives are found, the squad uses the spherical chamber to take them to its facility at Rodmans Neck Range in the Bronx.
Inside the chamber is a “basket” where the explosive rests to prevent explosion-triggering turbulence during the drive, Waters said.
The vessel may have been responsible for saving lives and sparing property damage the night of Sept. 17, when a homemade bomb packed with shrapnel ripped through a dumpster at W. 23rd near Sixth Ave., wounding passersby in Chelsea on a bustling Saturday night. Three hours later, two state troopers discovered a pressure cooker hooked up to a cell phone about four blocks from the first blast. Both devices, and two found the same day in New Jersey, are believed to be the work of Ahmad Rahami, 28, of Elizabeth, N.J.
Bomb squad officers used a robot to detach the device from the cell phone, which served as a timer. The robot lifted the bomb and set it inside the vessel’s chamber.