Students forced to evacuate middle school
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January 15, 2013 |
It's the start of a new year, but some terribly
bad old habits are lingering as the Bonners
Ferry Middle School was evacuated once again for
a bomb threat scribbled in a restroom stall; the
fourth so far in local schools this school year.
Sheriff's dispatchers received the call shortly
after 1 p.m. today, a little over a month since
the last scare, and once again city, county and
federal peace officers dropped what they were
doing to respond, as did volunteer city
firefighters and Boundary Volunteer Ambulance
personnel, who not much earlier responded to a
single vehicle injury crash just south of town.
"These things involve an awful lot of people;
city police, the sheriff's office, Border
Patrol, not to mention fire and ambulance
people,"said Boundary County Emergency
Management Incident Commander Bob Graham, who
was also summoned to the school once again.
"They all have more important things to be
doing, and if something else came up during one
of these scares, they'd be stretched awfully
thin. It's not a good situation."
According to Graham, the threat this time was
considerably more involved than those in the
past.
"This time, they were in ink, written in four
separate location in the same stall," he said.
"It's apparent that the person who did it went
over a couple of them several times, making them
much more noticeable."
In addition, today's threat included a time of
detonation, though it was for 1 p.m., a few
minutes before the threat was noticed and called
in.
Students were evacuated to the high school gym
and placed on lockdown until the scene was
cleared after a physical search of the building
by law enforcement officers at 1:59 p.m.
"We didn't call in a bomb sniffing dog because
it just takes too long," Graham said. "We
conferred with federal and state agencies
involved in this sort of thing and determined
that it wasn't necessary."
Once again, anyone with information on the
person or persons who may be perpetrating these
costly hoaxes is encouraged to contact the
Bonners Ferry Police Department, (208) 267-2412.
A $1000 reward is still out there for
information leading to the arrest and conviction
of who ever is responsible.
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