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Bomb threats force three evacuations
August 30, 2007
A bomb threat Wednesday afternoon sparked the evacuation of a Pasco County government building.
Now repeat that sentence two more times.
Three different bomb threats were reported within a 20-minute span to three county facilities in central and west Pasco - including the courthouse and 911 communications center. All were evacuated, searched and cleared. "It was a busy afternoon," said Pasco sheriff's spokesman Doug Tobin.
Employees and residents started streaming outside about 1 p.m. to stand in a sweltering 95 degrees for more than an hour. It wasn't until about 2:30 p.m. when they started filing back into the David "Hap" Clark Jr. Building off U.S. 41 in Land O'Lakes and the West Pasco Judicial Center and the Emergency Operations Center in New Port Richey. Tobin said 911 service was not disrupted by the evacuations.
All three threats were made by male callers, the Sheriff's Office said. The agency doesn't think that the first threat, made to Land O'Lakes, is linked to the last two threats made to New Port Richey. But officials think the last two threats are linked.
The caller who made the first threat warned that an "explosive device" was in the Clark building. It was made to the cell phone of an unidentified woman taking classes there.
The call was made about 2 a.m. Wednesday. But she didn't get the message until the afternoon, when she reported it to firefighters. Pasco Fire Rescue's administrative offices are in the building. The evacuation started at 1:02 p.m. It was 1:09 p.m. when another threat was called in, this time to the Emergency Operations Center in the West Pasco Government Complex off Little Road.
The operations center houses the county's 911 communications center for Pasco Fire Rescue and the Sheriff's Office. It was unknown if the threat was received via 911 or another phone line. The operations center was ordered evacuated - somehow accidentally triggering an evacuation of the West Pasco Judicial Center.
Thirteen minutes into that evacuation, a third bomb threat was called in to the communications center. What building did that caller threaten? The West Pasco Judicial Center. So the evacuation there continued.
Deputies and firefighters sealed off the courthouse parking lot and kept bystanders across the street. Government and Citizen Drives were also shut down, keeping traffic out of the entire complex. Bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in. Standing outside in the heat was no fun, said defense attorney Keith Hammond. For some it could have been worse. "The elderly were having trouble standing ...," he said, "and I was concerned about the infants being overheated."
Even when officials finally let everyone back inside the courthouse, they had to wait for employees to get in first. Then there was a long line outside waiting to go back through the metal detectors inside. "It was a long two hours in the August heat," Hammond said. "It made me think, what did they do in the old days in courthouses before air conditioning?" The investigation into the threats is ongoing.
http://www.sptimes.com/2007/08/30/Pasco/Bomb_threats_force_th.shtml
Front Range Community College's Westminster campus is closed today after a bomb threat yesterday. The campus at 3645 W. 112th Ave. was shut down "as an exercise of caution," the college's Web site said.
A Westminster dispatcher said police were called to inspect the campus late yesterday. The closure includes College Hill Library and the Children's Place child-care center.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_5686072,00.html
TSA Worried About 'Things That Look Normal'
August 30, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The seventh floor of Transportation Security Administration headquarters is quiet when we walk in, but behind the calm, a storm is brewing. It's a massive, ominous problem spanning 3.7 million square miles, 9,500 miles of coastline and 2,500 miles of land border with Canada --a government warning that a terror attack may be about to happen somewhere in the U.S. before summer's end.
This warning has put TSA Administrator Kip Hawley in a difficult position. "Staying ahead of the threat and if you look at an environment where the threat picture says there are people interested in doing an attack, but you don't have the specifics on the who, what, where, when and how; what do you do about it?" Hawley says. "How do you put in places security measures that respond to threats that are out there, but you don't know exactly how it's going to come?"
For Hawley, this time period can't be business as usual. He says looking for things out of the ordinary isn't good enough. "We have to pay attention to things that look normal --and that's the hard part."
As a result, TSA's Visible Intermodal Protection and Response teams - or VIPER - and Behavior Detection teams have been put on alert. They patrol Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; bus stations in Houston; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore and more. The VIPER teams usually are made up of two air marshals, one TSA bomb-sniffing-canine team, one or two transportation security inspectors and a local law enforcement officer. It's one of the best tools Hawley's got to go looking for a needle in a haystack.
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RE: My comment in post #2013. I was in error; not all incidents have been in St.Pete. The previous ones were in Jacksonville, FL. My apologies.