Bomb hoaxes cause panic in QC, Comelec

Anonymous callers caused panic among employees and people doing business at the Quezon City Hall of Justice and the Commission on Elections (Comelec) office in Intramuros, Manila when they warned that bombs were allegedly set to go off yesterday morning.

All the calls turned out to be hoaxes after police gave the all-clear after searching the buildings for bombs.

Inspector Arnulfo Franco, Quezon City Police District bomb disposal unit chief, told The STAR “there was no specific intention (for anyone to bomb the area and there was no bomb that was found).”

 “Maybe someone involved in one of the cases there just wanted to delay a hearing,” he said in jest.

According to Franco, an employee at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court Branch 39 received a call at 8:30 a.m. from a woman who said: “Just leave your place and a bomb will explode.”

This caused panic and when Franco’s team arrived at the scene, nearly everyone was already out of the building.

“They shouldn’t have reacted that way because bomb threats are basically done to create panic,” Franco said.

He said the standard operating procedure “or the immediate concern of the person who received the call is to look for any suspicious thing within the area and then to call the authorities to conduct paneling of the site to determine (if there is indeed a bomb).”

“A (bomb) threat is just a threat unless something tangible is found,” Franco added.

But 45 minutes later, another woman phoned the QCRTC Branch 406 and said: “If you value your life, vacate the place because three bombs will explode.”

Already doubting the veracity of the information, court authorities did not advise those who were in the building to leave, opting instead to call the police.

Franco said they again inspected the area and did not find the three purported bombs. He told the court administrator to request their telephone company to trace the source of the two calls that they received yesterday.

In Intramuros, employees at the Comelec and other government offices housed at the Palacio del Gobernador building panicked after a man had threatened to bomb the structure.

Comelec spokesman James Jimenez said his staff, Tess Canillas, had received a phone call from a man at around 10:55 a.m., threatening to blow up the poll body’ offices.

At around 11:05 a.m., the man phoned again warning that a bomb was going to explode at the Palacio building, which houses the Comelec, the Intramuros Administration and Bureau of Treasury.

“We reported the matter to the police. I think the employees of the Treasury, upon learning of it, went down.  So when Comelec employees saw this, they decided to leave the building,” he noted in a telephone interview.

Operatives from the Philippine National Police had searched the building using bomb-sniffing dogs but found no explosives.  The Comelec occupies the fifth, seventh and eighth floors of the building.

Jimenez dismissed the possibility that the ongoing investigation on the national broadband network (NBN) contract has anything to do with the bomb threats. Retired Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos is being accused of brokering the controversial project for China’s ZTE Corp.

“So many things are going on at the Comelec. The processes of recounting votes are being done here and, maybe, there are supporters (who are angry with Comelec),” he said.