Surrey pipe bomb fear forces evacuation of Kwantlen classrooms

Twitter user Ravi Mangat posted this photo purported to be from the Kwantlen campus in Surrey during Monday’s evacuation alert.

A suspected pipe bomb found at the Surrey campus of Kwantlen Polytechnic University on Monday morning turned out to be a pipe.

But an evacuation prompted by the initial discovery at 8 a.m. disrupted morning classes for hundreds of students and caused pandemonium among some students, including one who thought someone had been shot.

Two classroom buildings at the Surrey campus were evacuated after a staff member found a 20-by-3 centimetre metal baton that was sealed at both ends.

Police treated it as a potential bomb, cordoned off the area with yellow police tape and a number of cruisers and ambulances, surrounded the device with sandbags and sent in a remote-controlled robot to detonate it.

“We activated a charge but it did not have an active fuse,” said Surrey RCMP spokesman Sgt. Drew Grainger. “It was a pipe.”

He said police will continue to investigate to see if the pipe was intentionally made to look like a bomb.

“What are the odds that it will end up being a piece of the staging from last week’s event (Kwantlen Cram Jam concert)? That was my guess from the start,” tweeted Don McGonigal.

Morning classes were cancelled for hundreds of students in two of the campus’s four buildings after a staff member found the pipe near a parking lot reserved for staff and faculty, said Kwantlen spokeswoman Joanne Saunders.

“It’s not something you would usually see,” she said. “We’re treating it very seriously.”

The school had not received any threats or letters, she said.

She said students were notified by the university’s internal messaging system and through digital signage about the evacuation and cancelled classes.

But one student, Gerneet Tatla, 23, said she found students “running and screaming” when she arrived for her 10 a.m. class in a building that wasn’t evacuated.

“I fell down because people where pushing and shoving,” she said. “I was pushed over by the crowds.”

She said her first thought was that someone had been shot.

“It was very scary,” she said. “I felt like my safety was at risk.”

Tatla said she had trouble getting information from staff and had to go on to her Kwantlen account to find out what had happened.

“I was sort of choked they [university staff] didn’t handle it better,” she said.

Saunders and Grainger said those affected were notified in a timely manner.

slazaruk@theprovince.com

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