Bomb Hoaxes Sweep O.C. in Wake of Oklahoma Blast

An Anaheim water company employee arrived at work at 6 a.m. to find a container on the front stoop filled with oily liquid and marked “Boom.”

At a Santa Ana elementary school, the assistant principal spotted a black briefcase on a street corner that also carried a menacing note. At a nearby bank, a red backpack left behind in a restroom sent a jolt of panic through workers.

In the wake of the devastating Oklahoma City blast, government workers and ordinary residents have found themselves jittery and suddenly vulnerable as a wave of bomb hoaxes swept Orange County this week.

Authorities cautioned that such threats are typical after a much-publicized bombing and that most reports were copycat hoaxes or came from newly vigilant residents. Still, law enforcement officers and employers say they can’t take any chances.

At the Social Security Administration office in Santa Ana’s federal building--target of a bomb threat Tuesday--administrators called off today’s “Take Our Children to Work Day” activities as a precaution. Similar events were canceled at Social Security offices across the country.

“None of us are taking any of the threats lightly anymore,” said Katrina Lopez, a Social Security employee who had to explain to her 8-year-old daughter, Briana, why she couldn’t come to her mother’s workplace. “Our children are concerned about us. We have a couple of people in the office whose kids are saying, ‘You’re not going to work today, are you?’ ”

The agency’s commissioner, Shirley S. Charter, sent a memo to all Social Security employees late Tuesday indefinitely postponing the children’s visits, “given that there have been continued threats against federal facilities nationwide.”

In Santa Ana, two Social Security workers were so jarred by recent events that they have asked for temporary leaves rather than face the uncertainty of reporting to work. Three others have asked to be transferred to offices that are not located in federal buildings, said Lopez, the office’s union representative.

The day of the Oklahoma City bombing, Anaheim City Hall and the Santa Ana building that houses the FBI were evacuated after bomb threats.

So far, none of the Orange County bomb scares have yielded explosives.

On Tuesday, the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad responded to news of the suspicious milk container at Aquatec Water Systems in Anaheim and determined that it was only oil and water, according to Anaheim police.

Dave Slagle, the employee who found the container, said the discovery irked him more than it frightened him, but he felt compelled to call authorities.

“I think it was just a form of vandalism,” Slagle said. “The whole company is very busy right now. We’re in the middle of a project. I was just angry that this might interfere with our work.”

In Santa Ana, Diamond Elementary School Assistant Principal Lanny Palagallo said he was on his way to work Tuesday morning when he spotted an abandoned black briefcase leaning against a wall near South Center Street and Borchard Avenue, about a block from the school. A crossing guard had spotted the same bag and they quickly called police.

“In your mind you think it’s a prank, but you can’t take any chances,” Palagallo said.

Santa Ana police arrived within minutes after receiving the 7:21 a.m. call and found a handwritten note reading “Boom” next to the bag. Police blocked the street and called the Sheriff’s Department bomb squad, which found nothing explosive in the case.

Palagallo said most children were already at school when police arrived. As a precaution, school officials moved children in classrooms near the street to another part of the campus as the authorities investigated. Parents were informed of the incident and Palagallo said he plans on talking about the importance of not playing pranks at a school assembly on Friday.

Later Tuesday morning, a red backpack left in the women’s restroom of the Fidelity Federal Bank in the 2700 block of Main Street turned out to be “nothing,” Santa Ana Police Lt. Jose Garcia said.

The incidents are taking an emotional toll.

“That’s why they call it terrorism, because it creates terror in the mind of people,” said Larry Cornelison, a Los Angeles-based supervisor of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ arson explosives task force.

Cornelison cautioned people to approach their daily tasks with a heightened awareness, but to put the possibility of danger in perspective.

“You cannot let paranoia set in and be so afraid to open your mail that everything looks suspicious,” he said.

Cornelison said any bombing that draws major media coverage is followed by a rise in hoaxes and threats from “a few strange people” who are drawn out by the news. In most instances, however, “bomb threats are nothing more than threats, to be disruptive, to be unnerving, and to be focused on creating problems for whatever business they might be calling it in to.”

Most companies and government agencies have plans in place for workers to search their own areas for suspicious objects if a bomb threat is called in, he said.

“A bomb looks like what it’s in--it doesn’t necessarily look like a bomb,” he said. “It can look like an attache case, a box, a computer, a desk. You have to look for something that you can’t identify.”

The Santa Ana Social Security office was searched after a caller warned on Tuesday that the nine-story building at Civic Center Plaza would be bombed Wednesday. The building also houses a post office, offices of the Internal Revenue Service, federal bankruptcy courts and other agencies.

“I searched through the desks, under the desks, under the chairs, in the mail slots and the form slots, to see if there were any packages that shouldn’t be there,” Lopez said.

“Obviously, the Oklahoma City bombing had an effect on all of us, because we lost a number of employees in that incident,” said district manager Wanda Waldman. “We are all very concerned about our safety, the general public’s feeling about federal employees and our families’ concerns about our safety.”

Waldman said the bomb scare was tremendously disruptive. Appointments made in advance with clients for Wednesday were rescheduled. Waldman later learned from the FBI that the threat apparently was not serious. So the appointments were changed back.

Measures also were taken to inform all employees of the threat, discuss the matter with union representatives and offer workers the option of taking temporary leave or transferring for a time to a different office.

“We can’t take the risk of not responding to it in a cautious manner,” Waldman said.

Security remained high at the building Wednesday, starting with a pre-dawn sweep that turned up nothing unusual.

Federal officers and private security guards stepped up patrols around Civic Center Plaza. Parking spaces immediately in front of the federal building were roped off, blocked by a federal police car.

Ilias Misky, who runs a hot-dog stand in front of the federal building, also noticed how there were fewer people about and said his business had never been so bad.

“Today is the worst,” he said. “Nobody can work in such a situation. Everybody wants to be safe.”

Increased vigilance also was evident at the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda during Wednesday’s unveiling of the Nixon commemorative postage stamp. A police officer helping with security, spotted a man who resembled the Oklahoma bombing suspect still at large, said Brea Police Lt. Chester Panique.

“It was somebody who had a lump in his pocket. He bore a resemblance,” Panique said. “As it turned out, the guy checked out really clean. His mother takes tickets at the Nixon library.”

Times staff writer Len Hall contributed to this report.