Police Kept Hopping by War-Linked Bomb Calls : Scares: They range from an abandoned car battery in a parking lot to a fake bomb near Fluor headquarters.

Law enforcement authorities in Orange County are scrambling to investigate a flood of bomb scares that some say is prompted by widespread fear that the Persian Gulf conflict could reach the home front in the form of terrorism.

Investigators probing a bomb threat at an Irvine office high-rise housing a contractor with Middle East ties on Thursday said the sheriff’s bomb squad has responded to 66 reports since Operation Desert Storm began last week.

That figure marks a sharp increase in the bomb squad’s normal duties, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, a Sheriff’s Department spokesman. All the calls to date have turned out to be false alarms.

Orange County is not alone. Bomb scares across the country have kept police departments jumping. Last week in New York City, police investigated 600 bomb scares. In Detroit, Newark, N.J., and Washington, a rash of bomb scares has been reported. Utah State University was closed by a bomb scare the day after the war began. Security is tighter at synagogues nationwide.

Although not all bomb threats that have inundated some police departments in the past week may be related to the Persian Gulf War, police say most appear to be made by pranksters preying on the fears of war-jittery residents.

“They appear to be using the war as an excuse,” Irvine Police Lt. Vic Thies said, adding that bomb threats in Irvine have tripled in the last week.

The bomb scares range from phoned-in threats, in which the caller refers to the Middle East, to reports by nervous residents who spot otherwise innocuous-looking packages, parked cars or appliances left out of place.

“There is the heightened awareness of suspicious-looking objects,” Olson said.

On Saturday, for instance, a nervous airline passenger called the county bomb squad when he noticed an abandoned car battery in the parking lot of John Wayne Airport. The squad responded quickly.

“We have increased surveillance on anything that appears out of the ordinary,” Sheriff’s Lt. Jay Mendez said. “These would be things that we would normally pass over.”

Other threats, which target businesses ranging from tailor shops and Arab-owned restaurants to banks and office buildings, have alluded to or directly referred to the Gulf War, officials said.

The most ominous threat to date came on Thursday when a fake bomb was discovered in a fifth-floor men’s restroom of the Park Place tower in Irvine, headquarters of the Fluor Corp., an international construction and engineering company.

Fluor, which once owned the Park Place corporate building, now leases the top three floors of the 10-story, mirror-glass tower just off the San Diego Freeway.

The threat was the fifth of the day and the 15th to which Irvine police have responded since Jan. 16, when the war started.

Authorities evacuated about 300 people from the building at 9:30 a.m. after a Fluor Corp. employee discovered a package that was designed to resemble an explosive device.

“There was no question that it looked like a bomb,” Irvine Police Sgt. Ron Flathers said. “They went to some trouble to make it look like it was real.”

The fake bomb was constructed of four cardboard tubes, which were filled with flour, wrapped in aluminum foil and bound together with electrical tape. The four cylinders were then put in a brown paper bag and left in a stall for the handicapped in the restroom.

Neither police nor company officials received any message indicating that the fake bomb was related to the Middle East conflict.

“It just seems like that’s becoming a fashionable thing to do,” Flathers said.

It was also unclear whether the bomb threat was aimed at Fluor, which specializes in oil-related engineering and construction, or other companies using office space in the building.

Fluor has long ties to the Middle East and last year signed a multibillion-dollar deal with Saudi Aramco, which produces most of Saudi Arabia’s crude oil. Fluor has an undisclosed number of employees in that country.

Fluor officials declined to comment on whether they believe that the threat was aimed at them or whether they have received other bomb threats in recent days. But they acknowledged increased wariness about possible terrorist threats.

Since the war broke out, company officials have contracted with the Irvine Police Department to position a uniformed police officer in the tower’s lobby, company and police officials said.

“There is a general alert throughout the world on potential terrorists, and we thought it would be a prudent step to take,” said Jim Rollins, Fluor’s vice president of communications.

Elsewhere in Orange County, some threats seem to be targeting Jewish or Arab religious and business establishments.

In Newport Beach, a Lebanese restaurant reported a bomb threat last week, and police are keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity at the city’s three Jewish synagogues, Police Sgt. Mike McDonough said.

“It just a matter of good business to monitor both the Arab and Jewish businesses in the city,” McDonough said, adding that the two bomb threats that have been reported in the city have turned up nothing.

“Somebody has got nothing better to do than to use the telephone line as a terrorist device,” McDonough said. Still, he pointed out, the department has taken a better-safe-than-sorry stance toward the threats.

Even schools have had their share of bomb threats.

At San Clemente High School, police arrested two students in connection with a bomb scare Thursday morning that turned out to be a prank.

The male students, 15 and 16 years old, will be charged with making a false report of a bomb threat, a misdemeanor, San Clemente Police Sgt. Richard Downing said.

In Fullerton, police were still looking for an anonymous caller, described only as “youngish,” who phoned Sunny Hills High School and said five bombs had been planted in various locations throughout the North County campus, Police Sgt. Glenn Deveney reported.

No bombs were found.

But Deveney cautioned that no bomb threats are taken lightly and that they pose “an added burden on law enforcement.”

Security at Santa Ana’s Civic Center Plaza, the site of many war demonstrations, both for and against U.S. military action,has also been stepped up, officials said.

At the county’s Hall of Administration, four uniformed officers milled about in the lobby around lunchtime on Thursday, watching people as they entered the building. No one was stopped.

And at the Federal Building, guards in blue blazers operated a metal detector and X-ray machines to monitor everyone who walked in.

Beginning a week ago, visitors to the post office located beside the Federal Building also have gone through metal detectors, and the post office entrance off the street is now locked.

“We had a bomb threat last Thursday,” said Larry Jennings, who is in charge at the branch post office. “That was a fun day.”

He said an unidentified person called the post office to say that a bomb “was in the mail.”

The person did not say he was with a particular organization, or why he might want to plant a bomb, Jennings said. Nevertheless, postal inspectors and federal marshals were called, the building was evacuated and a bomb-sniffing dog was brought in to nose thousands of pieces of mail. No bomb was found.

“With the demonstrators outside, and with all this bomb stuff going on, it was quite a day,” Jennings said.

Times staff writers Maria Newman and Katia Hetter and correspondent Len Hall contributed to this story. Bomb Squad Calls

Year Number 1991 *65 1990 877 1989 943 1988 805 1987 667 1986 682

*As of Jan. 21 Source: Orange County Sheriff’s Department