Explosives cause evacuation
Coeur d'Alene Press | UPDATED 6 years, 3 months AGO
Ramsey Elementary School parents line up outside Lake City High School to pick up their kids after the students were escorted to Lake City High when a citizen came to the Coeur d’Alene Police Department with found explosives in his vehicle on Friday. The Spokane Police Bomb Squad removed the explosives and the area is now safe. (LOREN BENOIT/Press)
By RALPH BARTHOLDT
Staff Writer
COEUR d’ALENE — A box of explosives in the back of a pickup truck Friday caused the evacuation of a school near the Coeur d’Alene Police Department and surrounding businesses.
Coeur d’Alene police evacuated Ramsey Elementary School, along with businesses along the western end of Schreiber Way on the 1300 block of Kathleen Avenue, around 1 p.m. Friday after a man stopped by the department looking to dispose a box of explosives found in a garage.
After evacuating the area, including the police department, officers called a Spokane County explosives unit that handles bomb threats and suspicious materials that resemble bombs throughout the region.
“They are trying to figure out how to contain and transport it,” Coeur d’Alene Police Capt. Dave Hagar said Friday afternoon.
By 3:15, the squad had worked out a plan to safely remove what could be unstable explosives.
Hagar said an area resident found the box of explosives, possibly from mining or road work operations, in a garage, and realizing its danger, transported it in the back of his pickup truck to the police department in an effort to dispose of it.
“It’s not unusual,” Hagar said. “It happens at police departments across the country. People bring in hand grenades and explosives because they think that’s what they should do.”
And they believe departments have the capabilities to safely get rid of them.
Often they do not.
“There was no ill intent,” Hagar said.
The school district sent text messages and emails to parents with children at Ramsey Elementary to inform them the students must be picked up at Lake City High School.
“Due to a hazardous materials incident at the Coeur d’Alene Police Department main offices near Ramsey Elementary School, all Ramsey students are being escorted now from the school to Lake City High School on N. Ramsey Road,” school district spokesperson Scott Maben wrote to parents. “All school buses serving Ramsey Elementary will pick up students at Lake City High School. Police advise to avoid Ramsey school until this incident is mitigated.”
Surrounding streets were reopened after 3 p.m. when the area was deemed safe.
