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Tuesday, October 21, 2003
Bomb threat sows panic in Baguio college
By Ernie N. Olson Jr. and Harley F. Palangchao
BAGUIO -- Close to 8,000 students of Baguio Colleges Foundation, their professors and the facility's non-teaching staff ran out in panic following the receipt by school authorities of a phoned in bomb threat Monday.
News of the threat, which turned out to be a hoax, spread like wildfire inside the campus and prompted students and the BCF staff to abandon the area.
A BCF student informed Sun.Star about the development.
Police said the person who phoned in the threat was female. Insp. Amador Orcino, Baguio City Police Office Crime Records and Identification Section chief and concurrent head of the BCPO Explosives and Ordnance Disposal Unit, said the caller told school authorities there was a bomb at the third floor and that it would explode at 3 p.m.
He said the school's telephone operator received the call at around 10 a.m. Monday and that students immediately started to rush outside the campus within just a few minutes.
Teachers also locked up most of the laboratory rooms when they ran for safety. No one was reportedly injured during the commotion.
Although bomb experts led by Orcino responded to the alarm less than three minutes after BCF authorities sought police assistance, after almost two hours of painstaking search, no bomb was found in the school.
However, he immediately advised the chief of security there to carefully inspect all the bags of students entering or leaving the campus.
Orcino explained they had a hard time searching for any bomb, which were allegedly hidden inside two plastic bottles, because no bomb-sniffing dogs were available to assist them in their search.
"The only suspicious item that we found at or near the alleged bomb site were these two items, but it turned out to be false alarm," he revealed, showing Sun.Star a discarded pack of biscuits and a 24 centiliter juice drink can.
"This prank call was reported to us this morning (Monday), barely two weeks after a similar bomb threat was also relayed by a still unidentified man to school authorities at the University of Baguio, just as they were having their final examinations. Pero intercom naman at hindi telepono ang ginamit ng prank caller (but the prankster used the intercom, not the telephone)," he added.
BCF opened classes Monday, owing to its trimester curriculum. School authorities, however, immediately suspended classes due to the bomb threat.
When the school thought it safe to resume classes at 2:10 p.m., many students refused to return to school. "Although classes in BCF were declared suspended this morning and the place was declared to be safe already, it is not up to us, the police, but to school authorities to say when the suspension is over," Orcino clarified.
It was learned that BCF has more than 9,000 students enrolled this semester and that this collegian population included 15 students from Nepal and less than a hundred more from Korea. Sun.Star Baguio
(October 21, 2003 issue)
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