Threat Planning

Plans need to cover two possibilities:

• Receipt of a call that refers to your own building
• Receipt of a call about a bomb elsewhere

All employees likely to answer your published numbers, in working hours or overnight, should be familiar with the company's "Threat Plan". They need to be fully familiar with any recording or caller ID devices that your phone system provides. They must know how to contact both the security coordinator and the police.

The employee who has taken a call must be available to talk to the police.

Handling a Threat

The "Bomb Threat" form will assist employees to handle the call itself and to record the necessary detail. If the caller is threatening an attack elsewhere, your action will end once you have informed the police and handed over to them any necessary paperwork. But if the threat is to your facilities, you will need to work with law enforcement officials.

• Preliminary assessment of the threat (take it seriously.... or not?) If it is a giggling child, you may assume it is a hoax and adopt the "do nothing" approach.
• If there is the slightest doubt, you should initiate your evacuation or search plans, in whatever combination the time scale quoted by the caller and the location quoted by the caller suggests.

Always report any threat to the police.

The purpose of evacuation is to move people from an area where they might be at risk to a place of lesser risk. The biggest dilemma facing anyone who's responsible for an evacuation decision in the context of a terrorist threat is how to determine what is, in fact, a safe haven. If, for example, an evacuation route would take employees past a suspicious device outside your building, evacuation may be the riskiest course to take.

Next >>