Twenty times a year, military and law enforcement members from across the country come to Huntsville for all-expenses-paid training on how homemade explosives are made and how to properly dispose of them.

It’s all under the supervision of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, which sponsors the groups and runs the school at its National Center for Explosives Training and Research facilities at Redstone Arsenal. The school conducts separate week-long classes throughout the year.

This past week, military explosives ordnance disposal technicians from the Army, Air Force, Marines and public safety bomb technicians from police departments. Participants came from 10 states,

On Friday, at the end of the latest class, the 27 students made homemade explosives using the knowledge they had garnered during the week and AL.com joined them to witness a controlled detonation to neutralize them.

There was a repeated sound of explosions at the ATF explosives range causing smoke to rise into the clear Huntsville sky just after 11 a.m. Friday.

The class is hands-on and helps the students recognize homemade explosives’ components, proper disposal, and how to testify in court in related cases.

“It’s all about the safety of the public,” said ATF Special Agent Gray Lane, the Homemade Explosives Training Program manager. “It’s all about the safety of the bomb tech. And it’s all about the safety of the bomb squad.”

“This is very vital training for law enforcement and for criminal investigators, and so ATF doesn’t charge for training. We bring them here. We give them the training and the benefit is they get this free training, but it’s very valuable for the communities that they serve.”

One of the participants, who prefers anonymity, said the class fills knowledge gaps.

“We run into all sorts of scenarios whether it’s hand grenades, pipe bombs, whatever,” the participant said. “But a lot of the stuff that we run into are homemade explosives that we don’t get a lot of training in during the basic bomb tech schooling.

“So a lot of times we’ll walk into a scene and yeah, I’ll look at chemicals or products and I don’t know what I’m looking at. And this school here has given me the tools that I need to go back home and take care of stuff myself and share that knowledge with the other bomb techs that I work with.”