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October 1, 2010 Peachland, BC
Volume 06 | Number 39
Kelowna-Westside
An independent member broker
Photo Joanne Layh
RCMP members search the municipal office with a specially trained bomb dog following a false bomb threat on Tuesday.
False bomb threat forces municipal office area evacuation By Joanne Layh A bomb threat called in from a pay phone brought nearly the entire RCMP detachment as well as Westbank First Nation police to downtown Peachland on Tuesday afternoon. Rocket, a dog specially trained to detect explosives at the G20, was also brought to the scene. “Right now, the entire detachment is here,” Constable Kincaid told the View as the police
response was unfolding. “We even called in the First Nations Police to help us out. They’re here, too.” The overwhelming RCMP response began with a phone call that came in at 4:06 p.m., only minutes after the municipal hall closed for the day. Corporal Podmoroff, who attended the bomb threat, says they received information from Telus that they had received a bomb threat that was called in from
a pay phone. The Telus operator was unable to distinguish whether the caller was male or female but the caller apparently directed their threat towards “the government office in Peachland”. As the municipal hall is Peachland’s only government office, that’s where RCMP focused their search. “We made our way over here, set up a perimeter and cleared the building,” Podmoroff said. RCMP members used
at least eight cars to cordon off the area. The nearby Gasthaus, dental office and fi re hall were cleared of all people while police searched the municipal hall. No one was in the municipal office at the time of the bomb threat as the call came in just outside of business hours. Inside the municipal office a dog handler, the specially trained bomb dog and an RCMP supervisor investigated the municipal office while the remainder of the de-
tachment contained the area. “The dog went through the building and it was negative so the explosive disposal unit was advised and nothing was located,” RCMP communications officer Steve Holmes later told the View. By 5:15 p.m. the building was given the all clear and the RCMP began to leave town. As the View was going to press, it was still unknown who called in the bomb threat or why. “There was nothing
that Ident [the forensic identification section] could do with the pay phone because it was too far out of the containment area,” Holmes said, adding that RCMP were able to locate where the call came from, but when they arrived, no one was around. Access to the phone by too many pedestrians and a lack of video surveillance around the phone will also make any further investigation into the threat difficult to pursue.
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