APEC Bomb Scare at University of Hawaii
A possible bomb threat marked the first day of APEC week in Honolulu.
Around 5 p.m. Monday, officers from the Honolulu Police Department, fire department and FBI swarmed onto the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa to investigate a suspicious package — two miles from the heart of this week’s APEC activity.
Class was just getting out and the campus was packed. Many faculty members couldn’t get to their cars while a bomb squad assessed the risk of the package, which was in the vicinity of the biomedical science building.
About 15 police officers, two SWAT vehicles, six other marked and unmarked police cars and two fire trucks gathered at the intersection of Maile Way and East-West Road.
For an hour, police officers blocked the intersection on the upper campus. One woman was nearly in tears because she wasn’t allowed to get to her car behind the police barrier, which meant her children were stranded at a nearby elementary school.
But most people were good-natured about waiting and formed small knots of onlookers.
The officers handling the scene appeared calm, quietly going about their business, even though at one point the rumor was that there were four suspicious packages.
HPD officer Gabriel Kira said he and some other bicycle cops had been pulled from protest duty in Waikiki to help manage the scene. He chatted cheerfully while he waited, occasionally stopping pedestrians and cyclists who tried to cut through.
One officer‚ J. Martin of HPD, emerged from behind the wall of emergency vehicles once to make a brief statement: All would be clear in 10 minutes. He evaded questions about the nature of the package and how it was identified as “suspicious,” but he said campus security called HPD onto the scene.
A little after 6 p.m., a moped was let through, marking the anticlimactic end to an hour of precaution.
