I find the "pipe bomb" story to be suspiciously convenient, frankly, and wonder why it didn't come to light earlier. It might actually have happened, but I don't think it can be used as an extenuating circumstance because, the people giving interviews didn't mention it at the time, so if it figured in the thinking of the people responding to the toys, its contribution doesn't appear to have been particularly prominent.
To Greg London, thanks for the update on the time-line --- I was one of those who thought the bomb-quad had arrived and recognized the device in maybe a half-hour. I see I was wrong (I didn't realize things got started as early in the morning as they did, either). However, I don't propose to second-guess the bomb-squad on the scene, I suspect that they know their job and how long it takes to do it properly.
As to "whether reasonable people" could mistake these things for bombs, one of the articles linked here earlier talked about "Object placement may have aggravated concerns", and quoted a police officer from (Atlanta, I think?) as saying, "If we'd found it stuck to a bridge we would have thought it might be a bomb, too". That may have been professional courtesy, I suppose.
I do apologize for making my first contributions on this forum on this subject, and in substantial disagreement with my hosts, at that. I've been a long-time reader of Making Light.
I think the City of Boston should put the things up for auction. If they can get Mayor Menino's as well as the artists' autographs on them, all the better.
A drunken truck driver running a load of lumber into a bridge abutment at 4AM can shut down morning traffic for several hours (this happened a few years ago). Putting up a roadblock on some of those same roads during the day can have a pretty significant impact, as well.
A roadblock for a suspected bomb, for the half-hour it takes to get the bomb squad and their bomb-sniffing dogs there to recognize it for the harmless toy it is, does not constitute panic.
I think we're relying on media reports here, are we not? The same media who get paralyzed for weeks by an American tourist going missing in Cancun?
What panic?
They blocked the roads that would be affected were these things really bombs until they identified the things. Once they were recognized as harmless, they took down the roadblocks. It was over in about a half hour, save for the Monday-morning quarterbacking, the embarassment and the media churn.
Anticorum: was the file-cabinet fastened to the bottom of a bridge? Did you find there were similar cabinets on a few other bridges before you had a chance to investigate the first one? If not, I wouldn't worry about it.
My experience is very similar to Pedantic Peasant's.
Looking at some of the other posts, I think you have to step out of the position of omniscience-through-hindsight and put yourself into a few different pairs of shoes before casting judgment.
For example,
1) The poor MBTA-schlub who notices a blinking electronic box under a bridge, and wonders what sort of thing gets stuck to bridges.
2) Some person sitting in an office, far away from the scene, who gets a phone call about a weird thing stuck to a bridge. As the news goes out on the police band radio and people start looking for them, this person then gets several more calls in the next twenty minutes as more of these things are found on other bridges in the city.
The person in (1) might have recognized the thing as a likely prank, but didn't. The person in (2) is operating on little more than rumor --- that person isn't at the scene.
Since the National Guard draws heavily from these people, some of them have friends who are facing real IEDs every day. In Boston, some of them probably know someone who knows someone who knows too much about the IRA's own "IEDs", and not in a good way.
I'm glad I wasn't person (2). But if I were, I'd hope that I'd have a bit more grace and humor as I pursued Turner Broadcasting's marketing department.
It doesn't matter that the publicity campaign has been going on for several weeks. person (1) noticed the damned thing yesterday. That person didn't think, "Oh, that's been there for weeks", they thought, "What the hell is that?", and called for someone to investigate. In response to that call, lots of other people started looking at bridges and all of a sudden it was a movement.
And, of course, we have those "If you see a strange unattended package, please report it" announcements on the T.
Since I don't watch television, I'm puzzled about the reaction to this all around. I gather the discovery of the first device led to people noticing the others on the other bridges within a half-hour, before the first device was recognized as a harmless prank. I'm not sure that, if I were responsible for public safety, and I had this problem drop in my lap on a winter afternoon, that I wouldn't react much the same way. I wonder if we'd be laughing at the Madrid or London police if this had happened in those cities.
I think Mayor Menino is well within his rights at trying to recover the costs of responding to this operation from Turner Broadcasting. It's not like a city budget is unlimited. I do think our local officials could be displaying a bit more grace about this, but I don't think they're due the mockery they're receiving.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2007 | 6 |
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