On Friday, Sept. 14, bomb threats were made at the University of Texas at Austin and at North Dakota State University in Fargo, ND.  The threat to UT was made by a man claiming to be part of al-Qaida.  The threat to North Dakota State was an unrelated threat that happened to be made on the same day as the one at UT-Austin.

The incidents led both universities to evacuate their campuses.  Although the bomb threats of Sept. 14 happened outside of San Antonio, this city is no stranger to bomb threats.  In fact, the police department has seen a rise in bomb threats over the past few weeks.

On Sept. 12, the front desk of the Menger Hotel received a phone call reporting that a bomb was in the hotel.  The facility was evacuated and the bomb squad went in to discover the hotel was clean.

Over a month ago, on Aug. 1, a bomb threat was reported at the San Antonio International Airport. While it was later revealed that there had been no bomb, the threat was reason enough to close down the only international airport in the seventh largest city in the United States for a few hours.

A week later, on Aug. 6, the San Antonio Police Department responded to a bomb threat at the historic Gunter Hotel in downtown.  It was later revealed that the same man who called in the Gunter threat had also called in the airport threat.

The similarity among these incidents, fortunately, is that after being investigated by bomb squads, the threats turned out to all be hoaxes.  This is the way things are in today’s world. 

Despite the amount of money and energy used to protect the city from threats such as these, it is apparent that people will continue to call in bomb threats at our public institutions.  Rather than ignore such threats, the money is well spent if such an event is prevented

We cannot change the fact that people will continue to call in bomb threats.  However, the only thing we can do is to remain aware of what goes on around us and that these threats remain empty.  But if the day ever comes that the bomb is real, we must hope that the bomb squad can do their job and prevent a disaster.