LSU revisits emergency plan in wake of bomb threat

BATON ROUGE, La.—Louisiana State University is updating its emergency text messaging system and emergency management plan and looking to possibly add resources in the wake of last month’s bomb threat and other emergencies such as Hurricane Isaac.

The plan now in place for campus-wide threats, such as the vague bomb threat last month is similar to the plan used for home football games, Corey LaLonde, spokesman for the LSU Police Department, said in a news report from the Associated Press. That plan centers on the flow of traffic exiting campus when an evacuation is ordered.


However, campus-wide evacuations at other times don’t correspond well to that strategy, because people want to get on to the campus to pick up their children at the LSU Child Care Center and Lab School, officials said. Also, AP reported that police officers during football games are assigned to specific locations on campus. A bomb threat isn't predictable and complicates deployment of officers, they said.

About an hour after suspect William Bouvay Jr. phoned in the bomb threat on Sept. 17 that three bombs would go off in undisclosed locations on campus within two hours, LSU sent out a mass text warning. It took about 80 minutes for most of the 30,000 people on campus to evacuate, but LSU said some sections of campus were not cleared for almost two hours, AP reported.

SDN calls to the LSU Police Department were not returned on Tuesday.