Van Nuys : Salvation Army Dishes Out Thanks

About 150 Los Angeles police officers, firefighters and bomb squad personnel converged Thursday at Salvation Army facilities in Van Nuys for the second time in less than four months.

This time, however, the scene was much more relaxed.

The occasion was a turkey, chicken legs and shrimp luncheon served by the Salvation Army in appreciation of the emergency workers’ bravery last fall during a bomb scare that triggered the evacuation of a four-block area.

“This is just a way we want to say thank you for watching over us,” said Leslie-Anne Quinn, the Salvation Army’s director of community relations.

The Nov. 1 incident began in the early afternoon after a Salvation Army employee found a suspicious object resembling a grenade in one of the donation bins. The employee called police, who were dispatched along with firefighters and a bomb squad.

Quinn said that while waiting for additional military bomb experts from San Diego to arrive, residents were evacuated in four blocks around the scene.

At about 10 p.m., bomb experts moved what they said was a cluster bomb from the bin to the parking lot, where it was detonated without incident.

“It was just a sigh of relief,” Quinn said.

Officers and firefighters who took a brief break from their beats to attend the appreciation luncheon said the event was unnecessary, but served as a pleasant chance to interact with community members.

“It’s really nice to have someone from the community do something like this,” said Brad Merritt, patrol captain at the LAPD’s Van Nuys Division.

Quinn said the Salvation Army never received a bomb threat and no one has been charged in connection with the incident.

She said the bomb was believed to have been brought to Los Angeles following the Persian Gulf war.