UT-Austin completely evacuated because of bomb threat

http://www.utexas.edu

by eegilbert • 14 years ago

8 19 14 years ago

utexas.edu

brianfryer• 14 years ago

Yikes! Looks like I'll take Mopac into downtown today.

Hope the threat doesn't amount to anything...

jameskilton• 14 years ago

It's not just Austin: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-19602986

I've heard from a friend in Austin that this is a hoax. Sounds like this might be related to the anti-Islam film.

jmsduran• 14 years ago

What perplexes me is that the threat was called in at around 8:30 am and claimed bombs will go off around 10 am. UT made the decision to evacuate at 9:53 am, 7 minutes before the called threat. Is 7 minutes an ample amount of time to evacuate a campus this large?

teach5• 14 years ago

It's almost certainly a hoax, of course. I'm fairly certain there's never been a bomb threat on an American school where there turned out to be an actual bomb.

Not once in any school in the United States, ever in the entire history of the nation.

I've really looked for a counterexample, but I haven't found any. If any of you have one, I'd love to hear it.

MattRogish• 14 years ago

It seems remarkably easy and consequence-free to disrupt major institutions like universities, sporting events, etc.

The answer probably isn't to ignore the threat, but it seems there's gotta be a better solution than shutting the entire thing down. Maybe not.

davidrupp5• 14 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre

teach5• 14 years ago

This is a ridiculously-poor example. The Columbine shooting didn't involve a planted bomb, and there wasn't a phone call in advance. The boys just showed up to school shooting.

cobrausn• 14 years ago

North Dakota State University has been evacuated as well.

http://www.chron.com/communityblogs/atmosphere/article/North...

driverdan• 14 years ago

Why is this on HN? Hoaxes like this happen daily.

mikeyouse• 14 years ago

I presume because it happened 3-days after 9/11 and the bomber/hoaxer claimed to be with Al Queda.

smcguinness• 14 years ago

We had a discussion about this about how often bomb threats get made to universities. I felt as if this was a rare thing, which is why, IMO, when it does happen the news picks it up.

However, my coworker thought that it does happen often, but is curious as to how they then distinguish between what might be legitimate and what they immediately think is a hoax.

Then we both thought, if you do want to make a bomb threat, how do you decide who to call? Deans office? Football Coach? Ombudsman?

teach5• 14 years ago

I'm at a public school in suburban Austin, and we get probably one bomb threat a year (that I know about). We evacuate for each one, unfortunately.

enraged_camel• 14 years ago

Bruce Schneier wrote an excellent piece about this very topic back in April. It's worth a read: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/04/bomb_threats_a...

(Reader comments are great, too.)

UT-Austin completely evacuated because of bomb threat

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