THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 21, 1996 TAG: 9603210359
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
State police halted interstate traffic for an hour Wednesday while a bomb squad examined, X-rayed and blasted a small roll of carpet.
No one was hurt.
The suspicious carpet was reported about noon when a motorist with a cellular phone called police. Troopers found the carpet on the shoulder of Interstate 64 near the Interstate 264 interchange. The troopers alerted the bomb squad, whose members were training nearby.
By 12:10 p.m., the state police had formed a media assembly point a safe distance from the suspicious carpet. Traffic was routed off the interstate while the bomb squad examined the roll.
The carpet was an 18-inch-wide remnant, rolled tightly and secured with three strips of duct tape. The bomb squad set up a special device that perforates suspicious packages with shotgun pellets. The device was fired, and nothing out of the ordinary happened.
Then authorities released a statement.
``The state police bomb squad `safed' what they believe was a suspicious device, which turned out to be rolled up carpet,'' spokeswoman Tammy Van Dame said.
Although it seems humorous now, Van Dame said her department's bomb squad has no choice but to destroy packages they can't identify. And when the bomb squad examined and X-rayed the roll, they couldn't be certain it was only carpet.
Sometimes, Van Dame said, packages containing perfectly ordinary items appear suspicious on X-rays, and police would rather destroy a package they can't identify than take a chance and open it.
In the past few years, area bomb squads have been forced to destroy fruit, Barbie dolls, a tuxedo, a white-water rafting video and a briefcase full of resumes.
``You can never be too careful,'' Van Dame said. by CNB