Thousands of people streamed off university
campuses in Texas and North Dakota on Friday after phoned-in bomb
threats prompted evacuations and officials warned students and faculty
to get away as quickly as possible. No bombs were found on either campus
by early afternoon and it was not clear whether the threats were
related.
The University of Texas
received a call about 8:35 a.m. from a man claiming to be with al-Qaida
who said he had placed bombs all over the 50,000-student Austin campus,
according to University of Texas spokeswoman Rhonda Weldon. He claimed
the bombs would go off in 90 minutes and all buildings were evacuated at
9:50 a.m. as a precaution, Weldon said.
The deadline passed without
incident, and the university later issued advisories saying all
buildings has been cleared and were reopening by noon. Classes were
canceled for the remainder of Friday, but other university activities
were to resume by 5 p.m.
"We are extremely confident that the campus is safe," UT President William Powers said at an early afternoon news conference.
North Dakota State
University President Dean Bresciani said 20,000 people also were
evacuated from his school's main and downtown campuses in Fargo after
the school received its bomb threat Friday morning. Officials did not
immediately release details about the North Dakota threat and its
evacuation remained in place by early afternoon.
In Texas, sirens wailed on
campus and cellphones pinged with text messages when the initial alert
when out. Students described more confusion than panic as they exited
the sprawling campus in what one described as an "orderly but tense"
manner. Students said they were directed off campus by university staff.
"One of them said to me
'get off this campus as soon as possible,'" said Elizabeth Gerberich, an
18-year-old freshman from New Jersey.
Police blocked off roads heading into campus as lines of cars sat in gridlock trying to get out.
At the football stadium,
executive senior associate athletics director Ed Goble said he was
discussing logistics with authorities because the Longhorns needed to
get ready to leave for a Saturday football game at the University of
Mississippi. Shortly after 11 a.m., while the rest of campus remained
almost entirely deserted, Goble said police had given football players
permission to go into the athletic complex to pack for the game.
Ashley Moran, a freshman
from Houston, said she was waiting to get into class when word quickly
began spreading among students to leave immediately.
"It makes me really nervous I just know we're supposed to get out," she said.
With rain falling, students
stood under awnings and overhangs and inundated nearby off-campus
restaurants and coffee shops as they waited to find out when classes
would resume.
Abby Johnston, a production
and special editions coordinator for Texas Student Media, said she
received the first text message from the university less than an hour
after she arrived at work and started thinking about what she would
publish in the next day's paper. Then sirens started blaring.
"We do the siren test once a
month and so at first people thought maybe it was just a test, and then
we started to tell everybody, 'No actually we have to get out of here
pretty immediately,'" said Johnston, 22. "There was definitely a little
bit of nervous tension."
Tania Lara, a graduate
student at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, said she was
at work inside a central campus academic building when she got a text
message to get as far away was possible.
"It was calm but nobody
knew what was going on," she said, describing a crush of students
heading for the exits. "No one was yelling 'get out of here' or anything
like that."
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