Times-Advocate, 1999-04-28, Page 8•
8
Exeter Times.Advocate
Aogna
Editoria1. Opinion
TIMES -ADVOCATE
PUBLICATIONS MAIL REGISTRATION NUMBER 07511
Jim Beckett
Publisher and Editor
Don Smith
Deb Lord
General Manager Production Manager
Published by J.W. Eedy Publications Limited
424 Main Street South. P.O. Box 235(
F:xeter, Ontario NOM 1S6 • ( 519) 235-1:331
EDITORIAL
Bomb threats must be
taken seriously
In the same few days that a horrible
drama unfolded at a Denver, Colorado
school, bomb threats led to the evacua-
tion of two midwestern Ontario high
schools. .
The common belief is that bomb threats are
rarely serious. The person who makes the call
gets his thrills not from blowing up the school, but
from causing a disruption. He wants to see the
school evacuated, and emergency personnel scur-
rying about looking for the bomb. .
Denver was the exception. There, the two stu-
dents who hunted down and murdered more than
a dozen schoolmates clearly had every intention
of destroying the school. Had their bombs explod-
ed, the death count Would have been a lot higher.
What happened in Denver is precisely the rea-
son emergency personnel must, and do take bomb
threats seriously. School staff may be 99 per rent
certain the bomb se,ire is nothing more than. a
juvenile attempt to get a test cancelled. but there
is that other one F -r cent. that outside chance
that someone is crazy enough to blow up the
place.
The call comes in. and the response is immedi-
ate. Firefighters rush to the school, while students
move outside. In this area, that means volunteer
firefighters are called away from their homes and
businesses. Ambulance crews go on standby, in
case there are injuries. Even if there is no bomb,
evacuating a. school presents its own dangers. At
the very least, someone could. easily stumble and
Fall. The police also respond - not Just a.single
officer, but several. Quite conceivably. off' duty
• personnel have to be called in on overtime. some-
thing few municipal budgets can afford.
A bomb threat effectively leaves the .community
with little or no• police, fire or ambulance protec-
tion. There are always arrangements with nearby
towns for coverage, but in this part of the world,
that means an extra 20 minutes. Even an extra
five minutes can spell the difference b.etween life
and death at the scene of a serious car crash.
To put it bluntly, an idiotic phone call by some-
one who is clearly too young and silly to be play
ing with telephones, could prove every bit as
deadly as a vicious bombing.
The child who called in the bomb threat at
Kincardine is 17 years old. In theory, he is old
1 enough to .understand the consequences of his
actions, and to pay an appropriate penalty.
While a fine and probation will be the probable
sentence for someone convicted of mischief, it
would be interesting to see what would happen if
the courts had the power to hand down a differ-
ent sort of sentence.
That boy should spend at least a day with each
of the emergency services which responded to his
bomb call. He would have the opportunity to learn
the importance of a fast response. He would also
learn how few in number emergency personnel
really are, especially in a rural area. The commu-
nity cannot afford to have them off on wild goose
chases; there are too many real emergencies hap-
pening.
Perhaps the boy should have to take a course in
CPR, where he would learn that when breathing
and pulse cease because of a heart attack or
stroke. for example, it takes four to six minutes
for the brain to die. While performing CPR on a
plastic mannequin, he could imagine flow long 15
minutes would seem to a person desperately try-
ing to keep someone alive until the paramedics
arrive.
A bomb threat is not a harmless prank to be
laughed at. It is an expensive and potentially life
threatening crime and should be treated as such.
Wednesday. April 28. 19.99
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What was Helen Johns hidingi
.As readers of last week's T -A know, Helen .Johns
recently won the PC nomination for the new Huron -
Bruce riding: Problem is, I have no idea what she
stands for — and neither does the public — because
of Johns' recent refusal to sit down with the T -A for
an interview.
We had it all planned out. Because Johns
had to battle with Bruce MPP and fellow
Progressive Conservative Barb Fisher for the
newly -created riding, the T -A wanted to give
its readers a large feature on this unique
faceoff between two members of the same
party. We. had planned a possible two-page
spread, featuring interviews with Johns and
Fisher. The story was also slated to appear
in our sister papers The Wingham Advance -
Times and The Walkerton Herald -Times.
That didn't happen, though,
-In a move that was put j political, Johns
killed the story, afraid it would .give too much expo-
sure to Fisher, a relative unknown in this -part of the.
county. An interview with Helen, I was told by her
executive assistant Terra Ahrens, wouldn't help
.Helen because everybody here already knows who
she is. In other words, Johns only wants her name in
the newspaper when it will help her.
It turns out Johns and her people were right,
because she won the election. That's not the point,
though.
I ` e decision to refuse an interview took us at
T -A by surprise because usually politicians are eager
to have their names in newspapers. They'll take any
coverage they can get, good or bad. Not .Johns.
although I did .notice she was only all too happy to
speak to -the media after she won the election.
So what we intended to be a two-page
spread turned into a vague 'brief on the T-
A's April 14 front page.
As a result, I still have many unanswered
questions I had intended to ask Johns:
. •After four years as Huron MPP„what so far
have been your greatest challenges?
•What are your greatest failures, success-
es?
•What do we do to solve the rural health
care crisis, •which has seen Exeter's• South
Huron -Hospital close its emergency room on
. a few occasions because of serious doctor
shn rtages?
*With a provincial election coming up, what issues
are you most concerned about?
After Johns refused to sit down and talk with the T-
A, I don't know the answers to any of these ques-
tions. And neither do the taxpayers, who deserve to
know how their elected politicians stand on issues.
Politicians have a bad enough reputation already -
Dodging the media — and in turn, the public.— only
adds to the suspicion and makes things worse.
the
SCOTT
NIXON
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