By LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / May 15, 1999

LAPLACE – Students and staff at The Glade School were sent home Thursday while firefighters, detectives and a bomb-sniffing dog searched the school.

At 11:44 a.m., the St. John Parish Sheriff’s Office got a report of a notediscovered at the school, which claimed a bomb was hidden and was timed to detonate at 2 p.m.In scant minutes, the entire school evacuated to the north side of the building, as there was an indication in the note that the alleged bomb might be hidden on the south side.

The 2 p.m. threat came and went without incident. No bomb was found.”With everything going on in the country, we can never take chances,” Superintendent Cleveland Farlough said at the scene. “We never know whenit’s the real thing.”So far, Farlough said, he had counted himself fortunate that the school system had not been faced with such threats since the Columbine High School incident in Littleton, Colo.

Meanwhile, several children sustained problems from the midday heat, and school nurses were treating them with ice.

“I’ve always been an advocate of no lockers in the schools, except where students have to change clothes,” Farlough added. “I think it’s a sadsituation, since schools used to be known as a safe place to be.”Acting Glade principal Robert Schaff organized the evacuation and, as emergency personnel carefully hand-inspected everything from lockers to vehicles in the parking lot, the decision was made to send students home for the remainder of the day.

“It’s taken much longer than we thought to clear the place,” Associate Superintendent Chris Donaldson commented as he assisted in keeping order in the schoolyard.

Students, for the most part, treated the evacuation like a long recess, a respite from the final days of the school term.

A bomb-sniffing dog named Tessa, specially trained for the chore and managed by Deputy Billy Jordan of the St. James Parish Sheriff’s Office,inspected the building and grounds and found nothing.

Jordan has worked his bomb unit since 1983 and never found one bomb yet, except in training exercises.”I dread the day I do,” he said.The note itself was bagged and secured by crime scene investigators, who hope to uncover its author.

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