A Reality Check: When a Bomb Scare Hits Close to Home

My day began with a mundane family chore. On my way to work, I stopped to pay tuition at the Jewish school my son will start next week. The last thing I was thinking about was being trapped in a war zone or caught up in geopolitical tensions.

But suddenly it seemed to be happening.

Almost as soon as I got there, the school was evacuated. At the entrance to the fire station next door, a white shopping bag with an American flag on the top had been placed next to the fuel pump.

I had walked into a bomb scare.

My thoughts turned immediately to Madeline Albright--or was it Sandy Berger? I could remember hearing one of them recently on CNN talking about the possibility of retaliation for the United States’ bombings in Afghanistan and Sudan. Had Osama bin Laden found my pocket of the San Fernando Valley on his secret terrorist maps?

*

The school was cleared and the children attending the summer program were escorted out, ostensibly for a “walk,” while a police officer stood watch. A nearby community college abruptly ended classes and evacuated the classrooms and offices facing the street.

Traffic stopped on a typically busy thoroughfare. Police cars, their amber, blue and white lights flashing, parked on both ends of the long block and sealed it off. Yellow police tape was unfurled. A police helicopter whirred overhead.

Firefighters warned everyone away from the school and the fire station. No one was allowed to enter the area--or leave it.

Then it hit me: I had to get to work. I couldn’t be stuck here for the hours it often takes authorities to resolve a bomb scare and clear the area.

I pulled out my press pass and pleaded with the firefighters. You don’t understand, I said. I work downtown where a building or two is evacuated every week because of a “suspicious package.” When is it ever really a bomb?

They weren’t buying it. Nope, they said. It’s a drag for us, too, but your car has to stay where it is.

I walked down to the end of the sealed-off area, to a parking lot where the schoolchildren and the office staff were making the best of an awkward situation. A couple teachers wheeled a cart down the sidewalk with milk and graham crackers and other diversions.

Sitting on the curb, I wrote my tuition check and came upon the school emergency form, the one I always take for granted, the one that now stopped me in my tracks: What if there were another bomb threat? What if my son were here without me? Or what if I were here without him--my car parked the way it was now, 20 feet from what could be a bomb?

I have always considered this school to be a safe, warm place where my daughter went through preschool and kindergarten and where my son will follow in her path. Sending our children there meant they would not only learn the fine art of playing with wet sand but also about Jewish holidays and customs, among many other things.

Now, though, the idea of sending my children to this school raised new questions: Does attending a Jewish school also mean accepting the risk that there could be a bomb planted there someday, courtesy of endless Mideast tensions? Or is this a fear all Americans must face--it was, after all, an American flag that sat there, cloaking the suspected bomb next door. Was our school really a target?

It was hard to believe, but everyone was taking this seriously. “With the political situation today,” the fire captain said to me, “you never can be too careful.”

*

With sirens blaring and lights flashing, the bomb squad arrived. The officers emerged from two vans and a car wearing heavy body armor.

Resigned to the fact that I wasn’t leaving, I found a pay phone across the street and made some calls, then checked my messages.

I could no longer see the officers from where I was standing, but a few minutes later, it was over.

A police officer, nice enough to stroll over, told me I could finally retrieve my car from the school lot.

On my way back, I ran into the school’s maintenance man. He shook his head. I knew that wasn’t a bomb, he said: Some guy had parked at the school, announced that he had two old American flags he wanted to get rid of and had decided to leave them at the fire station.

So the shopping bag of flags was nothing more than a law-abiding citizen’s offering to the authorities.

Does this man know what havoc he caused? I don’t think so. Television and newspapers typically don’t cover bomb scares.

I stopped by the fire station and heard the firefighters praising their captain for taking precautions. “Good call,” one said, echoing my feeling, too.

I left, relieved that the tuition was paid, that I had missed rush hour on the Hollywood Freeway and, most of all, that Bin Laden and his network of terrorists hadn’t found my pocket of Los Angeles this time.