Firefighters and emergency personnel responded to a bomb threat at Boothbay Regional High School, called in at 11:30 a.m. Monday. No dogs were called in to search. “We analyze each threat now and make a determination whether people are willing to go in and search, and they were,” said Police Chief Robert Hasch.
Though no bomb was found and the chief is still investigating, Hasch did find a student had an inert grenade in his school locker.
“We received info of a hand grenade in a locker and a kid admitted it was his, but we don’t think it is related [to the bomb threat],” Hasch said.
According to the chief, when the school was evacuated, rumors began flying about a student having a grenade in a backpack in his locker. It was revealed to the chief, and the grenade was found. “It was inert – it had no [gun]powder, but, it did send things up a notch. It was a real WWII grenade, with a pin, the whole works,” said Hasch.
On Tuesday when discussing the bomb threat incident, Union 51 Supt. Eileen King sounded frustrated with the latest and recent spate of threats.
“Unfortunately,” King said, Monday’s threat is the third since the beginning of the school year.
King said the threat was delivered via a note written on a wall, and the students were detained outside the school until the all-clear at 1 p.m.
King and the board are definitely exploring some options to combat threats to the school.
“We have a variety of different options we are looking at,” King said.
Though she wants to stress there has been no decision made, she acknowledges there have been discussions of “installation of cameras, and also making up for the instructional time the students have lost,” she said.
According to King the students have now lost one full day to the bomb threats. “We’ve lost one full instructional day, and we are surely exploring the concept of making that time up either on a Saturday, or at the end of the school year for high school students only.”
During a bomb threat situation, law enforcement takes over the scene, however police have been consulted to offer some solutions.
Just since January, a new person is visible throughout the halls of BRHS – School Resource Officer, Larry Brown. “This semester we have brought in a resource officer in a pilot program, to see how it impacts things,” King said.
The bomb threats are currently under investigation by the Boothbay Harbor police, and are costly to the community.
“It is very costly,” said Hasch. The chief said school and EMA personnel did a cost breakdown recently; an analysis of the impact of a school bomb threat on the local and outlying communities.
“Oh, sure, it (the costs) goes back to the taxpayers,” Hasch said. It is not, however, just all the cost of emergency personnel and equipment. Hasch said students have been evacuated around lunchtime. “Lunches sit out and that’s a lot to throw away. On top of that, the elementary school has to then make extra lunches,” he said.
Hasch must call in extra officers, volunteer firefighters get paid, an ambulance is on standby, all school maintenance personnel are called and, “it just gets pretty expensive.” Hasch certainly doesn’t begrudge what has to be done in the name of safety, but there’s no denying the expense.
“I think we can make this much more difficult for people to do this [make bomb threats],” Hasch said.
Hasch said the Boothbay Area YMCA had been plagued with vandalism and theft and installing cameras made a “tremendous” difference. “In my opinion, you can put them in the hallways, where and when people are,” Hasch said.
The message was “scrawled” on the boys’ bathroom wall, according to Hasch. “I think the number one thing is to catch those people. We don’t have a suspect at this time, but we know who was in and out of some of those bathrooms. That doesn’t mean we have a particular person, but we can narrow it down.”
Hasch said everybody is disgusted with the situation, including the students who sit in the elementary school gym waiting for the school to be cleared of the threat.
Hasch said, “Ninety-eight percent of the students don’t like this one bit.”
