To defuse bombs, Civil Defence gets a sophisticated vehicle

RAWALPINDI:

A vehicle equipped with sophisticated bomb-disposal tools arrived in Rawalpindi from Lahore on Friday. The SUV has been handed over to the Civil Defence (CD) Department in Rawalpindi by the Punjab government after the Wednesday’s night suicide blast that killed 24 people, officials said.

The European Union had donated eight such vehicles to Pakistan: four each to the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab governments.

The modified SUV, made by Toyota, is equipped with 150 types of modern and sophisticated tools to disable a bomb, according to CD District Officer Tayyaman Raza.

It carries a robot that can be used to carry bombs away from the scene to a safer place for disposal, Raza said. The robot is operated wirelessly through a computer.

Secondly the vehicle contains a bomb suit that a trained member of the bomb disposal squad can wear and approach a bomb safely, Raza said.

The suit is also usable in summers, as it has an inbuilt cooling system to keep the temperature inside the suit bearable, he added.

The SUV also has an X-ray machine to examine bags or anything else containing a bomb. Using X-rays, an expert can study the bomb without having to open the bag, which can be risky at times.

Lastly, the vehicle has a water cannon gun that can be used to short the circuitry used in certain kinds of bombs.

This will help disable such bombs in case the officials feel there is a risk of the bomb exploding before it can be defused, Raza said.

Raza added that the vehicle was equipped with an electric generator to run different kinds of bomb detection and disposal equipment and a dry battery to support the power for two hours in case of generator failure.

Responding to a question, the CD officer said three members of his team were trained in Lahore to operate the vehicle.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled 'defuse' in the headline. The error is corrected.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 24^th, 2012.