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→ Take a look at Bakersfield College’s evacuation plan map. Evacuation_Plan.pdf (482 KB) |
Many students may not have realized it, but Bakersfield College recently received another bomb threat.
And the reason students may not have known about the threat is that campus administrators made the decision not to tell students or to evacuate classes.
The threat happened Nov. 1, two days after a bomb threat had officials evacuating the campus.
“Safety is the primary response,” said Michele Bresso, director of marketing and public relations. “If there is no danger and you are acting on this fear, that doesn’t soothe the students. We don’t want to disrupt class anymore then we have to.”
Kirk Russell, technical services librarian, was part of a team to help evacuate the first floor of the library.
“We were asked to go look through the buildings, to look for anything suspicious,” he said, referring to the second threat. “We have to be prepared for what they ask us to do.”
Russell said that he agreed with the choice not to evacuate during the second threat.
“My guess is that it would unnecessarily panic people,” he said.
A new evacuation map outlines four areas that students and faculty should be evacutated to, depending on what building they are in when a bomb threat occurs.
Bresso said that BC has had an evacuation plan for five or six years, and it has been updated every year.
She said that anyone in the community can now look at the evacuation map.
“I’m sure (the evacuation map) will help. We’ve sent it out, it’s posted on our Web site.” She added that the map is now a visual element that people can look at to help them with an evacuation.
Russell also said that an emergency map will help.
“If everybody had a sense of where to go, it would be really helpful,” he said.
Part of the evacuation plan is for faculty to stay on campus with their students. Bresso said that this is for safety reasons.
If there was a real emergency, people could be accounted for, she said, because they would be in their designated areas. However, even though the evacuation plan states that teachers are supposed to stay with their students on campus until notified, students are adults and can therefore leave if they wish, she said.
No one has been arrested for making the threats, and there is a $1,000 posted reward for information leading to the arrest of this person.
According to a campus police crime report, a male with a Hispanic accent made both threats.
In the first threat, the man said, “You have till exactly 9 a.m. to clear all students out.”
In the second threat a man said, “You thought I was playing last time, but now there is a bomb in the school and it will go off this afternoon.”
No one was injured in either incident. Authorities did not find any evidence of a bomb on campus.
— Staff writer Micayla Elliott contributed to this report.