http://www.travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/pa/pa_1161.html
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Office of the Spokesman
This information is current as of today, Fri Jul 06 2007 04:37:18 GMT-0700.
Worldwide Caution
April 10, 2007
Busy day in Columbus:
No explosives found
Bomb squad responds to 6 calls
Checking packages delayed commuters
Friday, July 6, 2007 3:27 AM
By Encarnacion Pyle
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
A sixth suspicious package closed Downtown streets late last night and tested authorities’ last nerves after hours of chasing one report after another.
Columbus police said video captured two men leaving a gift-wrapped package at the Ohio Department of Education headquarters, on Front Street near Broad Street.
A Fire Division bomb squad cut the red-and-white package open after a robot scanned it and determined it did not contain a bomb. Authorities would not say what, if anything, was in the box.
“It’s been a long, hot, difficult evening, but we must respond very quickly,” Columbus police Lt. Rod Wittich said around midnight.
“My gut tells me we had several incidences and the smart thing to do was to look at each one of them individually and see if we can determine a link and be prepared to respond at a moment’s notice,” he said.
Someone reported the package on Front Street about 9:21 last night, about 2½ hours after a wave of reports about unattended packages that tied up traffic as Downtown workers headed home. A bomb threat also was called in to Mount Carmel West.
Authorities had downplayed the earlier incidents as coincidental and unrelated, perhaps the result of local residents’ heightened vigilance after several attempted terrorist attacks in Great Britain. Two car bombs were discovered last Friday in London, and the next day, two men drove a Jeep Cherokee into the main airport in Glasgow, Scotland.
Columbus officials said there was no indication that yesterday’s incidents involved terrorism.
“Our residents are safe. That’s the first thing I want you to understand,” Mayor Michael B. Coleman said after the first five incidents.
“With unattended packages, we sometimes want to jump to the conclusion that these are suspicious packages,” he said. “Ever since 9/11, we look at things different.”
The first incident began about 4:30 p.m., when authorities closed part of High Street in the Short North after a passer-by called police about two red suitcases outside the American Apparel store at 5th Avenue.
Police discovered a tag on one piece of luggage, but the owner said she hadn’t seen the cases in more than a decade.
The area was sealed off for more than an hour as police waited for a Fire Division bomb squad. One of the squads was tied up in Marion on an unrelated matter.
“We’re a city that is prepared and has been tested,” Coleman said.
At 4:38 p.m. police received a call about a briefcase Downtown at 129 Nationwide Blvd. Bomb-squad technicians detonated the case. A portion of Nationwide was closed for a short time.
At 5:48 p.m., a bomb squad crew blew up a black briefcase found plopped near several gas pumps at a Marathon station on E. Hudson Street.
Between 6:10 p.m. and 6:49 p.m., police responded to calls about suspicious packages at I-70 and Mound Street and near N. Broadway, but neither turned out to be anything.
Mount Carmel West also received a bomb threat about the same time, causing its security officers to evacuate the emergency room and lock down the remainder of the hospital for a short time.