Results tagged “bombscare”

A few hours ago, police locked down East 14th Street and Union Square East, due to some "suspicious packages." (Not surprising, especially given the alleged recent terror plot.) Before the packages were eventually "cleared" by the cops, some folks Twittered about the incident:

Scott McGann, the man who allegedly brought a fake bomb (made of batteries and wires) to Laguardia Airport last Saturday and caused a lot of chaos, was indicted on charges of placing a false bomb and making a terrorist threat. He is currently being held at the psych ward at Bellevue, but the Daily News reports, "He will be arraigned Aug. 18 if he's found mentally competent. His family says he suffers from catatonic schizophrenia."

Thousands of people planning on traveling out of Laguardia Airport yesterday morning had their plans changed when a man was found with a fake bomb in his bag, prompting the evacuation of the central terminal. The NY Times reports, "passengers who had arrived for early-morning flights were forced to evacuate for nearly three hours, creating a domino effect of car and foot traffic that caused chaos during one of the busier travel days of the summer." And a 32-year-old man was arrested for allegedly causing the mess.

An explosion in a Long Island man's basement damaged sheet rock and spread broken glass while shredding a soft cooler Saturday evening, causing Long Island emergency personnel to respond in force. The bomb scare was the result of a show-and-tell gone awry. Francisco Lopes is a researcher at Stony Brook University, who said that he brought home some pieces of dry ice in a sealed glass jar to show his daughter. He left the container in his lunch cooler and left for dinner with family members. Unfortunately, Lopes did not realize what apparently many teenagers are fully aware of: allowing dry ice to warm in a sealed container results in a buildup of gas pressure that ends with a loud bang.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: Airmail in Brooklyn, truck vs train overpass in 31st St & 20th Ave in Queens, an amputation at Grant St & St Pauls Ave in Staten Island and a bomb scare at Broadway and Mercer (NYU) in Manhattan.
• A former deputy mayor under Rudy Giuliani is now an "ambassador" for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. But it's not that shocking, since Fran Reiter had lead the Liberal Party before joining the Giuliani administration...or is it?
• Who decides how subway posters are hung, because this is another example of great subway-poster-juxtaposition?
• A piece of the Willamette Meteorite, which is at the American Museum of Natural History, is being auctioned off. And, no, the museum is not selling it - the private meteorite collection who they traded the 28-pound piece (getting a piece of Mars in return) is behind the sale.
• One man has been arrested in the Labor Day weekend bias attack of Top Chef Season 2 contestant Josie Smith-Malave. The attack was outside a Sea Cliff, Long Island bar; Smith-Malave said that about 12 people punched and kicked her and two of her friends and that the bar's employees, who went outside to watch the attack, didn't do anything.
• The NYPD's new headquarters for the towing division are in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
• Staten Island DA Daniel Donovan is warning residents about the fake IRS "Customer Satisfaction Survey" scam because taxpayers aren't really customers anyway.
• Speaking of taxes, John Gotti Jr. may head to prison because he hasn't paid $220,00 in back taxes.
• The Eldridge Street Synagogue's rose window returns in time for Rosh Hashanah.

What with Paris Hilton's release earlier this week and the upcoming celebration of American Independence (sorry, Londonist!), we've been thinking a lot about freedom. Freedom to vote, freedom to choose, and most importantly, freedom to blog. Here are a few things we're happy we've been free to blog about this week.

More of the same on the local weather scene. Today should be a carbon copy of yesterday, which was a repeat of Wednesday which was a cut-and-paste of Tuesday. Sunny, high around 70. Tonight should be an identical twin of last night. Clear, low around 50. Tomorrow? You guessed it. Pretty much the same. The Weather Service is calling for a slight chance of isolated sprinkles Saturday evening as a back door cold front moves through the city, but, frankly, we think their just saying that to see if we're paying attention.

- Oh, and Park Slope was shut down for three hours tonight because of a bomb scare. Happy holidays!

Seattlest saw a house party get senselessly attacked with a shotgun and end in seven dead. A local senator is debated and their version of the big dig is investigated. To truly get to the bottom of it they interview the writer Jonathan Raban.

Every so often, Gothamist gets email from readers in Midtown asking if we've heard any news of a bomb threat, as their building is being evacuated or they can see the bomb squad headed across the street, but as we're still waiting for our police scanner, we usually don't know unless we see it on NY1. The NY Times has an article about the bomb squad's Midtown visit freguency: 350 suspicious packages, with only 10 getting "dynamically disrupted" by a nonexplosive device. Most recently, the bomb squad "disrupted" a package next to the Starbucks at 295 Madison Avenue. No!! Not the Starbucks at 9:30AM in the morning! The package turned out to be an electronic switch. Doh! Someone was screwed when he got to work in the morning.

Gothamist hasn't had the pleasure of bomb scare drills at our office, but Keith at Teleport City tells us that his building's actual procedure when there is a bomb scare is to :

I am, however, a bit disturbed that the security protocol for people inside a building that could potentially explode (my office sits above Barnes & Noble) is to not let people leave that building. Or, you know, alert them in any way. Had I not been bored and prone to getting up and staring out the window, I never would have been aware that there was a bomb squad guy downstairs and that the bock had been taped off. Oh well, let that be a lesson to the workers of the world: you should frequently get up and stare out the window for a spell.

Pictures of another Times Square bomb scare from rion.nu.

Starting this week in New York City, Citigroup Security and Investigative Services will begin regular patrols accompanied by security trained dogs. The patrols will take place at 111 Wall Street, 250 West Street, 333 West 34th Street, 388 and 390 Greenwich Street, 399 Park Avenue, and Court Square.

Gothamist on the earlier bomb scare, which now looks it was planted by the cop who discovered the package.