Phone-in threat empties school

WASILLA -- A bomb threat by telephone caused the evacuation of Wasilla High School Friday morning. The incident began with a phone call at about 9:50 a.m., according to WHS Principal Dwight Probasco. An unknown person phoned in the threat and WHS staff started emergency procedures, according to Probasco, who was in the parking lot of the vacated campus while Wasilla Police Department officers were inside searching the school shortly after the evacuation.

"We're all over at Wasilla middle School -- 1,000 of us, in their little gym-- all safe and cozy," Probasco said. He also said the incident response went smoothly.

Staff initially put the school on a lock-down status, after which students, teachers and staff walked across Bogard Road to the middle school. Lock down is a drilled procedure at Mat-Su Borough School District campuses. When a school goes on lock down, everyone is asked to stay where they are and staff members make certain that everyone is accounted for.

Lock down is meant to protect students and teachers in the event of a dangerous room-to-room situation, such as a violent person roaming the hallways. Lock down can also minimize a disturbance such as a rumble. During lock down an incident command team is set up among school staff members. District spokesperson Kim Floyd said lock down procedures have been credited with saving lives at both the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo. and during a May 2001 incident in Anchorage in which a mentally disturbed man assaulted students at Mountainview Elementary School with a knife.

"We know that practicing these drills works, and we know that there are situations when the lock down protects the students' safety," Floyd said.

On Friday, the lock down evolved into an evacuation, and the school's incident command team worked with Wasilla Police Department officers and other emergency responders when they arrived. Police, emergency responders and staff re-routed Bogard Road traffic on the busy section of street that runs between the two campuses. An estimated 5,900 vehicles passed through that section of Bogard every day during 2001, according to state Department of Transportation statistics.

Wasilla High's population waited in the middle school gym while officers searched the high school. At about 11:25 a.m. students and staff were allowed to return to the school, according to Floyd.

Staff and teachers were patrolling a perimeter around the grounds on foot and in their private vehicles while police searched the school. Floyd said traffic was re-routed primarily to protect the large group of pedestrians that had to walk between the two schools, and district employees worked with Wasilla PD on that effort. The district provides local emergency agencies with floor plans and emergency procedure plans for each individual school so evacuations and searches can go smoothly, according to Floyd.

Although Friday's incident was not a drill, Floyd said it illustrated how well-drilled the students and staff at WHS are, and how well local police and emergency responders worked with school staff.

Wasilla Police Chief Don Savage said an investigation into who placed the threatening phone call is underway. Savage also said police are often able to gather enough information to solve this sort of case.

"I'm not making a prediction, but that's how these cases often turn out," Savage said.

The culprit, if caught, could be charged with terroristic threatening. Under Alaska law, anyone who knowingly makes a false report that a circumstance is dangerous and causes an evacuation to occur can be charged with second-degree terroristic threatening, which is a class C felony.