Buildings evacuated due to bomb threat

The new chemistry building construction site, Jadwin Hall, Icahn Laboratory and the architecture laboratory were evacuated after Public Safety received an “unsubstantiated” report of a bomb threat to the construction site on March 12.

An “all clear” was issued later that day after authorities searched the site and found nothing dangerous, University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt ’96 said. In the morning, a person at the construction site notified a Public Safety officer of a written threat. Cliatt did not disclose the exact time that the threat was found, citing security concerns about revealing authorities’ response times.

The construction site, which was occupied by 250 contractors, was evacuated around 10 a.m., and Public Safety and the construction company performed an “immediate sweep” of the area, Cliatt said. The University posted a notice of the threat on its website around 11:20 a.m.

Township police, along with Mercer County and state bomb squads, also responded and began to assess the construction site. When they arrived, “there was a perception that a search could be performed expeditiously,” but it soon became clear that searching the entire construction site — which includes the 263,000-square-foot structure and the surrounding area — would take several hours, Cliatt said.

Law enforcement officials thought it “prudent” to evacuate nearby buildings while the sweep was conducted, she added. The University then decided to evacuate Jadwin, Icahn and the architecture laboratory — which is separate from the architecture school — out of an “abundance of caution,” Cliatt said.

Around noon, the Princeton Telephone and E-mail Notification System was activated for occupants of those buildings, instructing them to evacuate. The occupants were later released to go home.

Text messages, e-mails and voice message alerts were sent only to the occupants of those buildings, rather than to the entire campus, because the evacuation and threat was for a specific geographic area, Cliatt explained.

University spokeswoman Emily Aronson said in an e-mail that the University determined that pedestrians walking next to the evacuated buildings or outside the perimeter of the construction site were in areas with “no indication of threat.”

Aronson added that the University only notifies members of the campus community of a threat if they face “a direct impact on their personal safety or because action is required of them,” since it does not want to “degrade the level of response.”

The alert was sent to the 370 usual occupants of Jadwin and Icahn, though it is unclear how many were in the buildings that morning. The architecture laboratory was empty at the time.

Authorities concluded the search of the construction site around 4:40 p.m., and the University issued an “all clear” at 5 p.m.

Public Safety is leading the ongoing investigation.

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“There have been various leads,” Cliatt said. Public Safety Deputy Director Charles Davall declined to comment.

The threat, which occurred on the last day of midterms, did not interrupt any exams, Cliatt said.

The new chemistry building, which has been under construction since 2007, is expected to open this fall. The building will be the second-largest academic building on campus, behind only Firestone Library.