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March 22, 2002
Blair evacuated following bomb threats
Two bomb threats called in to a local police station on Friday prompted Blair adminstrators to evacuate the building.
The calls, which threatened a "serious incident" at 1:53 and "around 2:00," according to on-site Emergency Team Coordinator Mark Curran, were made to the Montgomery County Police Department.
At 11:40, police responded at Blair to a phone call from "a male voice saying that he had placed explosives in the building," according to Montgomery County Police Officer Derek Baliles.
Another call came in soon after. Said Baliles, "A second call was received at a little after twelve noon, again saying that explosive devices would go off."
Police decided that the threats were "serious enough that [the police] have to scan the building," said Curran. Blair's Administration then made the decision to evacuate the building.
After several hours of searching, police found no sign of explosives.
User Support Specialist Anne Wizniewski said that the calls were apparently made by people who "knew the inside of the school."
At 12:45, a Code Blue emergency status was declared in the building. At 12:53, the third floor was ordered to evacuate. The announcement instructed students to stop at their lockers because they would not be returning to the building. The other floors were evacuated similarly soon after.
Baliles said police began inspecting the building "about 1:50 or so" for the threatened explosives. Several police cars and K-9 trucks had arrived. "We did have dogs respond," said Baliles
After evacuating, students spent about an hour in the cold stadium. Administrators and faculty refused any sort of comment on the situation, though "bomb threat" was one rumored cause of the evacuation.
At 3:00, when the Magnet buses arrived for students who normally have an 8th period, administrators and Principal Phillip Gainous were still refusing to comment on the situation.
Students and staff were released from the stadium to their buses or cars around 2:10. The Colesville Road parking lot was closed, and cars arriving to pick up students were sent to the University Boulevard lot.
Since students were not allowed to re-enter the building, spare school buses were called to provide a place for students to keep warm from the biting cold. Montgomery County Public Schools Director of Transportation Stephen Raucher arrived to coordinate the arrival of school buses and their direction away from the 20-foot safety perimeter police established around the building.
Almost six hours after the emergency was first declared, police ended their search without having found anything. "The call was cleared at 6:17," said Baliles. "They were unsuccessful in locating a device."
Baliles said that in situations such as this, the decision to evacuate is made not by the police but by the school. "[Evacuation] is based on how the threat is perceived by the adminstration," said Baliles.
The Spring Fling, scheduled for Friday night, was cancelled and will be rescheduled after Spring Break.
According to Baliles, the false report of an explosive device is a felony. The maximum penalty for an adult is a fine of $10,000 and ten years in prison; for a minor, it is usually less than that.
The calls, which threatened a "serious incident" at 1:53 and "around 2:00," according to on-site Emergency Team Coordinator Mark Curran, were made to the Montgomery County Police Department.
At 11:40, police responded at Blair to a phone call from "a male voice saying that he had placed explosives in the building," according to Montgomery County Police Officer Derek Baliles.
Another call came in soon after. Said Baliles, "A second call was received at a little after twelve noon, again saying that explosive devices would go off."
Police decided that the threats were "serious enough that [the police] have to scan the building," said Curran. Blair's Administration then made the decision to evacuate the building.
After several hours of searching, police found no sign of explosives.
User Support Specialist Anne Wizniewski said that the calls were apparently made by people who "knew the inside of the school."
At 12:45, a Code Blue emergency status was declared in the building. At 12:53, the third floor was ordered to evacuate. The announcement instructed students to stop at their lockers because they would not be returning to the building. The other floors were evacuated similarly soon after.
Baliles said police began inspecting the building "about 1:50 or so" for the threatened explosives. Several police cars and K-9 trucks had arrived. "We did have dogs respond," said Baliles
After evacuating, students spent about an hour in the cold stadium. Administrators and faculty refused any sort of comment on the situation, though "bomb threat" was one rumored cause of the evacuation.
At 3:00, when the Magnet buses arrived for students who normally have an 8th period, administrators and Principal Phillip Gainous were still refusing to comment on the situation.
Students and staff were released from the stadium to their buses or cars around 2:10. The Colesville Road parking lot was closed, and cars arriving to pick up students were sent to the University Boulevard lot.
Since students were not allowed to re-enter the building, spare school buses were called to provide a place for students to keep warm from the biting cold. Montgomery County Public Schools Director of Transportation Stephen Raucher arrived to coordinate the arrival of school buses and their direction away from the 20-foot safety perimeter police established around the building.
Almost six hours after the emergency was first declared, police ended their search without having found anything. "The call was cleared at 6:17," said Baliles. "They were unsuccessful in locating a device."
Baliles said that in situations such as this, the decision to evacuate is made not by the police but by the school. "[Evacuation] is based on how the threat is perceived by the adminstration," said Baliles.
The Spring Fling, scheduled for Friday night, was cancelled and will be rescheduled after Spring Break.
According to Baliles, the false report of an explosive device is a felony. The maximum penalty for an adult is a fine of $10,000 and ten years in prison; for a minor, it is usually less than that.
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12:46 - Code Blue announced
12:53 - Third floor evacuated
12:58 - Second floor evacuated
1:05 - First floor evacuated
Yes, it was cold in the stadium, but the administration didn't really have a choice. They can't just let us sit in a building that could have a bomb in it, and they can't magically create warm weather either. Still, I agree, we should have been told what was going on. My guess is that we weren't told anything because the administration was afraid we'd panic.
Grow up! Would knowing that some whacko had phoned a bomb threat to the school made you any warmer while sitting on the icy bleachers for an hour and a half? And would you have conducted yourself any differently had you possessed this knowledge? I hope not. It should have been obvious to anyone who talked to the many teachers and even some administrators who had as little information as we did that information was only being passed in a need to know basis. And I hope you all can see that finding out then or finding out 2 hours later did not affect your experience at all. You can champion "right to know" until you are blue in the face, but the fact remains that your desire to be well informed falls well behind the school and police department's duty to keep the student body safe. If you'd trade safety for information, I think your priorities are in need of serious reevaluation.
Also-Joe: do you really think whatever administrator cared who you were? During a crisis like the one on the 22nd you are just another student who ,editor-in-chief of SCO or not, really has no need to know until the crisis had passed.
In closing, I would like to temper my remarks a bit. I appreciate the good work you all do here on SCO, even if I don't agree with you.
There is a fine balance that needs to be established when it comes to containing panic, and when nobody gets informed at all, despite an hour's worth of unexplained confinement in the stadium, I think that the administraiton has failed to establish that balance. As for who I am, that doesn't matter - I didn't even tell Ms. Hurley my name. I told her I was with Chips Online and asked if she could tell me anything about the situation. This same appraoch was used repeatedly, and nobody wanted to talk.
The result? The stadium was brimming with rumor and hearsay because no authority figure would confirm anything.
I've now heard several anecdotes of panicking teachers. I'm sure that didn't help matters any.
I acknowledge the desire to get eveyrone out of the building quickly and safely. But to then treat the student body with such disrespect as to give us no explanation, not even to the student newspapers, was, in my view, a significant error.
Ultimately, I think the matter of informing people of what was going on was handled very poorly. At least I was able to get useful information from the police.
We weren't told why the evacuation occured, and that prevented panic. Panic might have caused some people to leave their stuff in the school. It was a good idea not to make an announcement. However, I should have been told not to go too near the building.
In the school, the PA system activated Code Blue and told us to evacuate. This was succesful. Without standards like Code Blue this would have been more confusing. Once we were outside, though, there was no effective announcement system. It was hard to tell when it was time for walkers and drivers to go home, and the announcement of buses was inefficient. I was startled when I was told that Magnet buses were beginning to arrive; fortunately I didn't miss my bus.
I am glad, though, that the building still stands and there was never any actual explosive.
Then when I was in 6th period and they annouced the code blue some people thought that it was a pratice as thier was a code blue scheduled for monday. However I pointed out that like the other times they had a code blue they said "emergnce pratice situation." They didn't that time so I deicded it was probalby real. (Also they should make a clear distintion between and reall situation and a pratice situation one should react much difernatly in a real situation than if it is a pratice.) This was confermed when they said to evacuate the building and take all our stuff because we wouldn't be comming back, teachers too. This obviously ment it was not a drill because if it was at least teachers would be able to come back to the building. So at this point I tried to figue out what the situation was. I was when I was allready out side and walking to the stadium that I relised that it must be a bomb threat.
No one had even told me and I was rightly convince that their had been a bomb threat. The reaction could only be that coming form a bomb threat. Obivoulsy they hadn't found a bomb in that case they would of insturce very one to immidalty evacuate, not to stop and get our stuff. And also Obiously thier wasn't someone or thing dangerous in the building, in that case we would still be in our class rooms. Finnally it probally wasn't a gass leak we had one of those befor and they sent us to the Gym and SAC, also they in all likely hood wouldn't have told us to get our stuff. In any other situation would be that was not immidaly dangous they probally would have told us the reason so as prevent panic.
I'm sure not every one could of put all the peices together but it was definaly possable to do.
(which no-one around me knew of at that point.) I was in a
class that I had that morning
(retrieving the item that I accidently left there) when the code blue was announced. The room was filled with freshmen who kept on doing what they had been doing until they started to clear the 2nd floor. Some started joking and some were to the brink of tears with fear. If the administration didn't want us to panic they should have told or sent a few runners to tell all the teachers (and then the teachers could make the decision whether the kids should know) but just evacuating without a reason stated scared me and many others. As one other student said I remembered the incident from 9/11 and damn near paniced. What made it even worse was that once I found out what had happened I realized how close we were to the building. If there really was a bomb in the building the debress would have rushed directly at us. Not only that but if the person who "planted the bomb" had a good knowledge of the building who was to say that they didn't know that our policy was to evacuate to the
stadium? If they did know this then we can't assume that the sick mind who did this wouldn't put it in the stadium where there were almost three thousand innocent student and faculty members. On top of that when we were going to the buses we were way too close to the threat. The last thing that sevearly bothered me was that there were pregnant students and staff that were stuck out in the cold for a very long time. They were not allowed to leave and go home until the busses came. Even after the busses came the staff were forced to stay and "direct the students." Well would the school have liked to be held responsible if one of the expecting mothers got sick and they had complications with there birth/childs health after birth or the most awfull situation-they misscaried or gave birth to a dead fetus? I'll close saying one thing- this school needs to sit down and seriously re-think their emergency policies before someone get hurt or even killed.
The school was evacuated in a relatively quick and orderly fashion. And really, we weren't that close to the school. It would take a ridiculous amount of explosive necessary to blast rubble hundreds of feet from the school to the stadium.
Personally, I disagree with the administration's decision not to tell students (and teachers) what was going on. However I accept Mr. Gainous's decision. Presented with a very difficult set of choices, he and the Blair security staff did the best they could. As Mr. Gainous announced on Wednesday, he felt that telling students that a bomb threat had been placed on the school would only cause panic and chaos. His actions were well-intended.