BP evacuation turns out to be false alarm

Scores of workers were evacuated for more than two hours from a BP building in Warrenville Thursday afternoon, after a janitor found a suspicious item in a garbage bag and called police.

Warrenville police Cmdr. Pat Treacy said the object, found around 10:45 a.m. outside the building at 28100 Torch Parkway, turned out to be harmless.

"A custodian was outside near a Dumpster and saw a garbage bag on the outside of the bin that looked like it was carefully placed to stand up a certain way," Treacy said. "There were no threats or letters, but they decided to call us anyway and we called the bomb squad, since you can't afford to be wrong in something like this."

Members of the Warrenville Police Department, Warrenville Fire Protection District and DuPage County Sheriff's Bomb Squad blocked the building and parking lot entrances with squad cars, while employees were moved to another BP building across the street, at Torch Parkway and Winfield Road. Many left the area altogether, walking south toward the nearby Cantera complex during the lunchtime evacuation.

Treacy said police discovered the garbage bag contained a common household appliance and employees were allowed back into the building and parking lot around 1 p.m. Police would not reveal the type of appliance it was, saying they do not want to encourage anyone to create a real explosive with the device.

"With some of the electronic circuitry, it was hard for the technicians to tell that it wasn't (a bomb)," Tracey said. "We think it was basically a dumping incident that had gone awry."