Varying responses to threats

Photo: Contributed

School officials in four Canadian provinces all received similar bomb threats this week, but each responded to the potential danger differently.

Universities and schools across Prince Edward Island were evacuated Wednesday morning after police received a fax from someone threatening to detonate bombs at several schools. Three colleges in Nova Scotia were also evacuated after receiving threats.

Hours later, a school board in Winnipeg received a similar bomb threat, but no schools were evacuated.

And on Thursday, schools in three regions of Nunavut were closed due to a bomb threat, but reopened after lunch.

"Assessing a bomb threat is very, very difficult," said Chris Mathers, a Toronto-based crime and risk consultant. "You can't examine a bomb threat in a vacuum."

Mathers said a number of factors are considered when assessing the credibility of a bomb threat, including the frequency of the threats and whether similar threats have made.

"If you're getting a bomb threat every day, eventually someone had to make a decision not to act out as the person making the threats wants them to," said Mathers. "And typically, serious bombers don't call it in."

But he said with minimal information available, many officials would err on the side of caution, as was the case in P.E.I.

P.E.I. Staff Sgt. Kevin Baillie said this was the case when the threat was received Wednesday.

"There's no question, the vast majority of these types of threats are not credible. However, in the early stages, it's very difficult to say definitively that the threat is not credible," said Baillie, adding that the decision to evacuate schools was made by the school board.