"Fake grenade causes evacuations, flight delays at Southern California airport"

Friday, October 21, 2005

ONT evacuated over grenade-shaped auto accessory
Melissa Pinion-Whitt and L.C. Greene
The San Bernardino (CA) Sun
 
 
ONTARIO - To Ontario International Airport security, it had all the
characteristics of a World War II-style hand grenade.
The small chrome, pineapple-shaped device with a release pin looked so
realistic, it was immediately red-flagged while going through airport
screening.

As a result, travelers in Terminal 2 were evacuated and 11 flights delayed
Thursday.

The grenade, it turned out, was a knob for a car gear shifter.

"Unfortunately, we'd like to trust people, but at that point, we had to
treat it as a real grenade until we could have our bomb technicians look at
it and see that it wasn't a real device," said Ontario fire Investigator
Frank Huddleston.

Ontario firefighters came to the terminal after airport security spotted the
knob in checked baggage about 6 a.m.

Airport personnel evacuated the first floor of the terminal and contacted
the owner of the package, Huddleston said.

The passenger told officials the item was harmless, but as a precaution,
officials said it still was not allowed on the plane. Sometime after 8 a.m.,
the bomb squad sent in a robot to detonate the faux grenade.

Passengers were allowed back in the terminal around 9 a.m. People on early
flights missed their boarding and had to reschedule.

Passengers on later flights who had a chance to make it on the plane were
pushed to the front of the long lines.

About 11 flights were delayed, said Ontario International spokeswoman Maria
Tesoro-Fermin.

Nancy Parker, 40, of Oceanside and her friend, Mary Kay Saltgaver, 52, of
Ontario, arrived shortly before 6 a.m. to make a 7 a.m. flight to San
Francisco. They were there when the evacuation order came. They weren't told
why, but outside, they quickly figured out what was going on.

"We saw the canine bomb unit," Saltgaver said.

They also saw the squad send in the robot.

"We heard a little explosion," Parker said.

The women missed their flight and weren't sure if they would be able to fly
out at all Thursday.

Saltgaver's husband, who works at San Antonio Community Hospital in Upland,
said the hospital was alerted to stand by in case of casualties.

Upland resident Nancy Jensen arrived at the airport shortly after the
evacuation and had to wait outside for nearly three hours with hundreds of
other passengers. 

The other passengers were "for the most part, patient," she said.

Over the past several decades, the Fire Department's bomb squad has examined
abandoned luggage and even packaged food that appeared suspicious at the
airport. Huddleston said the squad came to the airport once when a
suspicious box containing a cactus was found.

But some of the suspicious packages the airport has found over the years
contained actual explosive devices that the owners believed were not live,
Huddleston said.

In this case, the package contained product samples for an auto parts
manufacturer, fire officials said.

The parts, which included the gear shift knob, were being taken to a car
show possibly in Memphis. Similar knobs advertised on other auto accessory
Web sites are made out of authentic military grenades which do not contain
explosive material. 

But this knob was not originally a grenade, Huddleston said.

Though passengers were inconvenienced, it was better to err on the side of
caution, Huddleston said.

"We'd rather find 20 fake gear shift knobs than one real grenade," he said.


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