On Tuesday February 10, 2015 there was a bomb threat at school.
Now here's my experience on that day.
On Tuesday around 10:50 I noticed a campus safety guy with two police officers standing at the door to my office (I work in a large office with other offices inside it, it's located at the front door to the building, and the fire alarm is outside the door to the office). I thought they were just checking the fire alarm because they kept looking at it. Maybe it's just a test, or maintenance, or some sort of alarm was set off with out it going off in the building. Then I hear the campus safety officer say, "bomb threat". BOMB THREAT are you kidding me right now? We've got a bomb threat? Then I hear one of the police officers say, "he said we was going to shoot everyone in the building". SO NOW THERE'S A SHOOTER? What is going on? Let me also mention that one of the police officers was holding a rifle. Not his small side arm but a very large rifle.
The campus safety officer is standing next to the fire alarm saying that he's waiting for confirmation to evacuate the building. A police officer says he doesn't care they have to evacuate the building with or without confirmation. (stupid campus safety, the police are over you and campus safety, what the police say is what you do!)
At this point I am standing up and standing in the door way of one of the ladies I work with telling her there's a bomb threat and there are police with rifles standing at the door. She steps out and that's when they turn on the fire alarm. It's blaring and their telling people to evacuate the building. Of course since I was sitting right there and heard what was happening I told all the ladies in our office that it's a bomb threat and we're evacuating. Now normally during a fire alarm we all evacuate and stand on the other side of the street until the fire department says we can enter the building again. Well not this time! We walk outside and the street is lined with police cars and there's a police officer standing in the street telling people to keep going they are closing the street. There was a firetruck blocking one end of the street and police vehicles blocking the other end (it's a very short street) So several of us went down King Street to Starbucks and hung out there waiting to find out whats going on. Luckily I remember that there's a webcam set up in our lobby so I pulled that up and we all watched that on my phone. Of course there was nothing going on, the building was empty. We finally started getting Cougar Alerts, the emergency call system the school has. The alerts were saying to be prepared to evacuate the area, follow directions given by the police, etc. A few minutes later we get another alert saying that a bomb was found. WOW we were all pretty shocked that they actually found one. We're getting alerts as phone calls, texts, and emails all saying a bomb was found.
So now we're all wondering was it a student, a disgruntled faculty/staff member or a crazy ex out for revenge? We stayed at Starbucks till 11:30am when we all started getting hungry. The school still wasn't sure whether or not to send us all home so everyone stayed down town, close by encase they open the buildings back up. They had closed the Beatty Center (where I work), the JC Long Building and Tate Building due to the fact that they are attached to the Beatty Center. They also closed the School of Education, Health and Human Performance (which is sort of across the street from us). The Craig Residence Hall was also closed down the street. Of course any store that was on the street or backed up to the building had to be closed. They closed several of the streets around.
We leave Starbucks to go eat at a restaurant near by the building. We see the bomb squad vehicle pull up and there are police every where and many of them with rifles. Which we find kind of strange for a bomb threat. So we're thinking the possibility of a shooter might still be in the mix. Since my phone still has the live feed from the webcam in the building going the other ladies are looking up to see what the news is saying. They're reporting now that there hasn't been a bomb found. WHAT IS GOING ON? So the president of the college sends out an email saying
So there was no bomb found and those messages were due to a mistyped emergency code. How stupid! Now there is still a bomb threat that they are taking very seriously. So the buildings are still closed as well as the streets. We can see police from our restaurant patrolling with their rifles we even saw them using the bomb detecting robot down a street. We ate a really great lunch and just hung out waiting to hear whether or not we could go home. We continued to receive alerts saying to shelter in place until further notice. Finally at 1:00 we got another email from the president saying
So classes are canceled until 5:00 and the buildings are closed until further notice but hopefully will reopen before 5:00. Still nothing on whether faculty/staff should stay or go. Well the Dean of the Business School decided to tell us in an email from the assistant dean telling us if we feel we can work more effectively from home we can do that. So we all took that as go home. One of the ladies that I work with dropped me off at the mall where my car was because the express buses don't run during the middle of the day.
Now here's a really weird thing. I still had the webcam feed up on my phone and was watching it periodically during the afternoon. At one point though I saw there were 8-9 police officers in full gear were in the building walking around. I texted a couple of the ladies from work and told them to go check out the webcam, but they couldn't get on. It gave them a page not found error. I even tried on my laptop and got the same message. They had turned off the live feed but some how I was still seeing it on my phone. The only thing we can figure out is that because I had been on that web page for hours and never closed it I was still seeing it. I then saw they had two dogs walking around the building too. It was pretty cool to see them searching the building. Of course all I could see was the lobby and whenever they passed by but still it was neat.
We got a final email from the president around 4:40.
All the buildings were opened and no bomb had been found. He reported that it was unacceptable how poorly the alert system worked in a time of real need. He will be working with the emergency management task-force to sort out the issue and fix it. It was a very nice message and I believe he handled it well.
Over all it was a crazy weird day at work on Tuesday.
Charleston City Paper: Bomb Threat included a gun threat
Bomb Threat Audio
Charleston City Paper: Bomb Threat included a gun threat
Bomb Threat Audio
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