HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — "Around noon today, we received a call of a possible bomb threat here at Calhoun Community College. We understand there were a number of other colleges in the state that also received threats," said Wes Torain, director of public relations and digital media at Calhoun Community College.
Luckily, things like this are often topics of discussion among university and college staff.
"Our police are trained in this area. We talk about this in our meetings and we talk about what we will do in the event of... Well, today is the event of," said Torain."
Here's how things went down today, to ensure the safety of both students and faculty: "we immediately evacuated all buildings; all buildings meeting here on the main campus, here in Decatur, as well as the Alabama Center for the Arts in downtown Decatur and our Huntsville campus across from the Space and Rocket Center," said Torain.
1. Evacuation is the first step.
2. Assessing the actual threat is the next.
"Our campus police began going through all the buildings to make sure that all- all is safe, to give the all-clear to search, to see if they see anything that looks strange," said Torain.
In today's world, technology can really help in situations like these.
"We have a campus alert system that allows us to contact employees right away via cell phone, home phone, text message, email... And when we have a situation like this we can get in touch with employees and students right away to let them know what they should do," said Torain.
As for the most recent update on all this: law enforcement cleared all buildings on all Calhoun campuses.
Students and employees are free to return to all buildings.