Update: They got us too!Well kinda; we were all sitting at work when someone comes by and tells us to evacuate because there had been a bomb threat. So we all mill around and go outside and of the execs tells us that someone had phoned in a bomb threat and because of what happened at Shaklee, they were going to err on the side of caution. He also said the cops were coming and were going to sweep with dogs and that we should probably not go near our cars.......yeah.
So anyway, we're like "whatever" and went on our merry ways.
About an hour later I came back and.....wow. They had the whole area cordoned off, the FBI, ATF, local cops and the BOMB SQUAD were there. I was like "hmmm...ok."
I went around the other side of the building to talk to some friends of mine and there was ambulances, fire trucks, K-9 units, unmarked cars, guys in suits with guns. It was chaos. We waited for about half an hour and nothing really happened. Then one of the guys walked over to the door and sat down on the curb out of view. There were some people standing around him and after about 5 minutes he stood up to reveal himself clad in a full bomb blast suit. There was a unanimous cry of "daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn."
The guy waddled into the building and about 20 mins later came out with a package with they dumped into one of those bomb blast cylinders to test it ( I assume.) Turns out, while the dogs were in the building, about three of them zeroed on this package and that made the feds a little suspect, so they sent someone in to get it.
After about an hour they must have decided that the package was OK because the bomb squad took off, then the amulance and fire truck, then most of the feds.
I took after that because I was hungry and when I got back everything was gone and it was business as usual. I'm still not sure what they found and if it was dangerous but it certainly was an exciting morning!
Ecoterrorists strike again...
Deanne and I were on our way to work this morning and we were listening to our local news radio station when we heard "The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has joined Plesanton Police in the investigation of an explosion at the Shaklee Corporation headquarters early this morning."
We both looked at each other because this piqued our interest on several levels.
Firstly, and most importantly, our good friend's father works at Shaklee, so our immediate concern was for his safety. The "device" went off at 4am so I don't think anyone was there and the reports say there were no injuries and minor damage.
Secondly, the Shaklee headquarters are about half a mile away from where I work. The local police were telling people at Shaklee and nearby Peoplesoft to not come into work today. So I thought "there's hope, it's small, but there's hope!" and I called into work to see if we had been shutdown too. But alas, it was not to be.
So I figured I'd use my proximity to the incident to snap some driveby pics which you can see below. Basically they're blurry and crap but it shows that they've blocked the entire road and there's bomb squad units still on the scene.
But who did this? Well it sounds VERY similar to a device that went off in front of the Chiron headquarters in Emeryville a few months ago; same timing device and everything. So everyone is concluding that it was hippy animal freaks.
Now Shaklee doesn't test on animals, I know that. So I think the ecohippies got their wires crossed (no pun intended.)
Anyway, thankfully no one was hurt and the damage was minor, but still, it shows that domestic terrorism can hit even in happy sunshine Pleasanton.
