Bomb Threat Forces Evacuation of Mall : Glendale: More than 50,000 people are driven from the Galleria. Three suspicious packages turn out to be bags of flour.

More than 50,000 shoppers and employees were driven out of the Glendale Galleria on Wednesday as police, responding to an anonymous telephone threat, searched out and destroyed three packages that turned out to be heavily wrapped five-pound bags of flour labeled “bomb.”

“It was a rotten thing for somebody to do during Christmas time,” said Gil Juarez, the mall’s Santa, who--still dressed in his red suit--comforted frightened children in a nearby parking lot as the streets around the mall filled with dismayed shoppers.

Some shoppers said there was widespread fear, but many others reported a fundamentally orderly evacuation of the 1.3-million-square-foot mall.

“Everybody was screaming,” said April Regino, 14, a junior high school student who had caught a bus from Hollywood to shop at the mall. A security guard “was running around for everybody to get out and everybody just started running,” she said.

The evacuation was ordered shortly after 2:45 p.m. when a male customer spotted a package marked “bomb 1” in a trash can in a second-floor restroom, across from a police substation in the mall. About the same time, an anonymous caller told the 911 emergency switchboard in Glendale police headquarters that there was a bomb in the mall, police said.

The call was traced to a pay phone at Broadway and Pacific Avenue, about a block from the mall, police said.

After ordering the evacuation, police sent for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s bomb squad and searched the mall. Two more packages, labeled “bomb 3” and “bomb 4,” were found by Glendale police officers in two other restrooms, authorities said.

Whether there is an undiscovered package labeled “bomb 2” was not known. Glendale police would not reveal details of the warning telephone call.

Operators of the bomb squad’s camera-equipped robot, guided by remote control, were unable to determine if the packages in the restrooms were actually bombs, so bomb-squad officers in protective clothing entered the building and blew up the packages with small charges of explosives, authorities said.

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“This was somebody’s idea of a practical joke,” said Sheriff’s Deputy Angie McLaughlin, who described the packages as five-pound bags of flour wrapped in brown paper and plastic and bound in red tape.

Shortly after 7 p.m., police began escorting groups of store workers back into the mall to help search for the possibly still-undiscovered “bomb” package and to close their shops. Meanwhile, other merchants who were still waiting to enter the mall gathered at a nearby fire station.

Glendale police spokesman Chahe Kheuregholian said officers took the extra precaution of evacuating the mall because of the ominous phone call combined with the discovery of the packages.

“Usually with a bomb threat in a bank or office building, we’ll go in and nothing tangible is found,” Kheuregholian said. “But in this case, where a customer walks into a bathroom and discovers a package with the word ‘bomb,’ that made the officers take this more seriously.”

The mall was cleared by sounding an alarm and urging shoppers over a loudspeaker system to leave.

Bisc Deenihan, whose architecture firm is located on the mezzanine level of the Galleria, said the alarm sounded like a foghorn, followed by a loudspeaker announcement that “there was a small gas leak and that people needed to evacuate.” Deenihan said she and her husband left the building on the advice of a security guard.

“It was almost like, ‘Is this for real or is this a drill?’ ” she said. “There was nobody directing us.”

Deenihan said she realized that something other than a gas leak had triggered the evacuation when she was told it was OK to start her car, which was parked in the mall garage, and she saw groups of people smoking cigarettes outside the mall--which she presumed would be forbidden in the presence of a gas leak.

In other parts of the mall, Glendale police officers reportedly began going from store to store, shouting for people to evacuate.

Tom Brubaker, an assistant manager at Pet Love pet store, was reluctant to abandon his shop’s 35 dogs, four cats and numerous birds.

“I’m more worried about their welfare than my own,” said Brubaker. “I wanted to stay in there, but the Glendale Police Department said, ‘Get out or we’ll bodily remove you.’ ”

McLaughlin said deputies will analyze the fake bombs to determine whether they are the work of the culprit who pulled a similar stunt at a Carson mall earlier this month. The South Bay Pavilion was evacuated for several hours after a device, believed to be a pipe bomb, was found in a restroom on Dec. 1. It was later detonated by a Sheriff’s Department bomb squad.

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Galleria spokeswoman Judy Smith said it was too soon to determine how much the bomb scare cost the mall--which houses five major department stores and 264 specialty stores and restaurants--in lost Christmas business.

The bomb scare marred what has otherwise been a dazzling Christmas shopping season for the Galleria, which has apparently benefited richly from the Northridge Fashion Center’s continuing troubles brought on by the January earthquake. Only two department stores have reopened in the Northridge mall. When the holiday shopping season began the day after Thanksgiving, the Galleria attracted twice as many shoppers as on the same day last year.

“We thank God it wasn’t on a weekend,” Smith said. “It wasn’t as busy as it could have been.”

Ramon Angel Luna, general manager of Photo By Adam portrait studios, said he believed he had lost about $1,200 in business as a result of the bomb scare.

“I’m just angry that someone could play such a practical joke and not have any consideration for others,” Luna said. “It’s one of the biggest times of the year for portraits. This day is helping me get back on my feet. One day’s loss is just too much to bear.”

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki wrote this story from reports filed by staff writer Vivien Lou Chen and correspondent Steve Ryfle.