Explosives suspected at Wilmington DE Station (11/3/22)

[jis]

Apparently some suspicious package which could be explosive was found at the Wilmington DE station. The station had been evacuated. Train movement was stopped for over an hour.

http://firststateupdate.com/2022/11/amtrak-station-evacuated-reports-of-explosives-found/
As of 1:20pm, train movement through Wilmington DE has just resumed.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

And very little news coverage.

And, no, I didn’t leave a package yesterday when I was there.

 

[saxpower]

Still nothing on the local newspaper website or local radio or tv websites. According to the site from the initial link, a K-9 alerted to unattended bag- no info was given regarding what was in the bag.

Admittedly, Wilmington, Delaware may not be on top of the news media's list of priorities for news coverage, but I think if it explosives were found we'd be hearing alot more about it.

 

[jis]

The only info available is from that paper quoted above and that all train movement through Wilmington was stopped for over an hour.

 

[AFS1970]

Unattended bags are fairly common. I listen to the MTA Police on a scanner often and they are frequently going to a train or a station for an unattended bag.

 

[Amtrak25]

If a dog found it, there must have been something.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

If a dog found it, there must have been something.

Not always true. Dogs can pick off residue too. Someone may have a job that required them to work with explosives, and then left a bag behind. There a narrow, but real reason why this is a non-story.

I do recall police training events leaving items behind.
There was a handbag left in New London, they X-ray it and then hit it with a water jet to disarm it. It contained nothing, other than a vengeful wife purse. (TV remote, short bit of TV cable)

So no news, means no issue.

 

[Mystic River Dragon]

K9s are wonderful, and if they smell something, it should always be checked out.

Of course once in a while they might slip up—like the time my best friend and her husband were in an airport and a K9 officer stuck his nose on her husband’s pocket and wouldn’t budge. They received profuse apologies when it turned out that what was in his pocket was a dog treat for their own dog for when they got home!

 

[jis]

Unless there were other factors present it is highly unusual to stop all traffic on the busiest corridor in the country for over an hour in the middle of the day, merely for finding an unattended bag.

 

[AmtrakBlue]

Unless there were other factors present it is highly unusual to stop all traffic on the busiest corridor in the country for over an hour in the middle of the day, merely for finding an unattended bag.

And evacuating the building. The article has a picture of passengers in the park along the river. Frankly if I thought the building was going to blow up, I think I'd want to be further away.

 

[jis]

I once saw the French method of handling such. At Gare du Nord in Paris while I was waiting for a Eurostar to London, an unattended bag was found leaning against a pillar supporting the roof. The French bomb squad evacuated everyone to outside a perimeter set by them, then brought in a wheeled robot and sent it to the bag, and blew it up. Apparently this is supposed to disrupt any triggering mechanism before it can trigger any explosive in the bag. But it was interesting to watch as it unfolded. This time there was nothing in the bag that was dangerous and some hapless traveler came back to discover his bag blown to smithereens. They should not have left it unattended. The French Securite folks were remarkably quick and efficient with the process as Paris then had some recent cases of actual explosives found in inconvenient places.

 

[railiner]

Times have changed. When I worked at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC in the late ‘60’s, we used to get an almost daily bomb threat from one ‘60’s radical group or another.
In most cases, the Port cops wouldn’t bother to evacuate. They’d just go thru coin lockers and garbage cans looking for anything suspicious.
That all changed after 9-11….now any threat would result in evacuation for a thorough search…