Unfortunately for myself and many others, routinely some idiot who thought he was funny would pull the fire alarm in the middle of the night, often in the dead of winter.
For safety precautions, the entire building had to be evacuated, and we would have to sit around outside, in the cold, in the rain and sometimes in the snow, as firefighters slowly made their way to the towers, inspected every room to make sure there was no fire and then would allow us back in. Of course, then you either had to walk 12 to 24 flights of steps, or wait for up to an hour for the elevator.
Unlike the Logan Fire Department, the Lexington Fire Department seldom arrived on scene in minutes. More like a half an hour. And it took time to search all those rooms. If my fellow dormitory inhabitants and myself could have found the person responsible for these incidents I really doubt he would ever have pulled a fire alarm again.
Back then, there was nothing so annoying as having to put up with two or more hours of aggravation in the middle of the night, especially when you had early morning classes, as I usually did.
I always figured it was some halfwit who hung out with dopers who pulled the alarm. After all, nobody living in the Tower would have wanted to go through that aggravation.
I had a flashback to those days recently when yet another phony bomb popped up on school property in Logan County. To sum it up, a school bus driver found a package that had the words "pipe bomb" written on the package and it was on a school bus from the Logan area that had been sent to Man during what was already a chaotic week, due to a sports tournament. Local law enforcement and fire fighters rushed to the scene, as did school official Jim Guy, who later described the scene to me as being very hectic.
Guy, who was on scene with the bus and its package, told me he was compiling information about where the bus has been and who has been on it in recent times to assist police in possibly finding the individual responsible for this incident.
You see the cretinous individual responsible for this and similar stunts probably doesn't understand that (a.) it really wasn't funny. And (b) it's a serious crime in this day and age of the Global War on Terror.
Just like all those years ago, at UK, authorities HAVE to deal with these situations as if it's for real for safety's sake.
Protocols for handling bomb threats come from the State Board of Education which require the local school to contact the West Virginia State Police to have them investigate with law enforcement units out Charleston. The authorities take such matters very seriously and people caught attempting bomb scares could face serious legal charges when caught - as in felony charges.
"Once we get all the information together we will turn it over to Sgt. Walls of the Man Police Department who is the lead investigator on this case," Guy told me the following day. "If we find the person responsible they will be prosecuted. What some people might not understand is that doing something like this is a felony as it is considered a terrorist act. In the world we live in today, we cannot take anything lightly anymore. We are just very thankful that nobody was hurt. "
People of limited intelligence who pull such stunts as this may think it's funny. But it's not. When fire departments and police agencies are forced to waste manpower on such things, it could lead to large scale disaster elsewhere. What if those first responders had been needed elsewhere at the same time, to deal with a real life or death situation? Someone's bone-headed stunt could have cost somebody else their life. Which is why this is against the law.
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Anyone with information about the person responsible for the pipe bomb hoax is asked to contact Sgt. D. Walls of the Man PD at 583-9631.
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