Full bomb alarm in Oslo today at the US Embassy!

arildno

The great drama here in Oslo started when security guards at the US Embassy spotted a suspicious object fixed underneath a car seeking entry at the embassy premises. Full bomb alarm was sounded, and the Norwegian authorities ordered full evacuation in half a kilometre's radius from the Embassy.
Since the US Embassy lies just shifted slightly to the heart of Oslo this meant, for example, full evacuation of the Royal Palace which is situated just a stone's throw from the Embassy.
Once the bomb squad was in place, they determined that the object was a TRAINING BOMB, i.e, utterly harmless.
The US ambassador was then able to explain that this car had been used in an internal crisis scenario exercise some time ago, and that somebody had forgotten to remove it after the exercise.

One might be paranoid and think that the Americans had deep worries about the efficacy of the Norwegian police forces due to the chaotic responses 22.July last year, and staged this whole thing to give us a test.
I rather choose to believe in American sloppiness, than that Americans have such devious minds.

Anyway, our City Chancellor was NOT amused, and churlishly demands "compensation" from the Americans for the costs placed on the Norwegian public.

Personally, I think he should have been magnanimous and said that humans err, even Americans, and that our police forces showed they were up to handling a crisis of this sort.



The US Embassy sent out the following message to the press:
"
Regarding the security incident at the U.S. Embassy

Earlier today, Embassy security officials identified a suspicious device in an Embassy-owned vehicle and took appropriate precautions. Upon investigation, the device was determined to be a non-threatening training device previously used in an exercise. The Embassy has resumed normal operations.

Embassy security personnel handled this incident in accordance
with standard procedures and alerted local emergency
services. The Embassy regrets the disruptions caused
by this incident. The security of Embassy staff, visitors,
and neighbors requires that we take any potential threat
seriously and respond immediately.

The Embassy would like to express appreciation for the extremely quick and professional response by Norwegian emergency services personnel. "

Monique

Whoopsie... glad to read that it was a 'false alarm'.

arildno

It is the type of errors the best of us can do.
A government official has swiftly responded "It is not a custom in Norway to demand compensation from people for alerting us to potential security threats".
Thus, City Chancellor Røsland's churlish demand will be ignored.

DragonPetter

That subject title scared me a bit. I'm glad it was nothing! I was at the Blindern cafeteria when that happened last summer.

DragonPetter

I hesitated to call it a false alarm, because the connotation implies it was almost wrong to report it. Its better to be safe than sorry.

arildno

I was at Eiksmarka in Bærum helping my mum into her new flat; I thought it was a great thunderclap, the carpenter thought it was an uncontrolled explosion in a tunnel building project.
Unfortunately, we were both wrong..

DragonPetter

I was worried to leave the campus at that point. I could understand my classmate's excitement because we didn't know what really happened, but I couldn't believe he was brave enough to go on his bike and ride down to see the scene after I told him its possible it wasn't over. I thought Bærum was relatively a good distance away, I'm surprised you heard it.

arildno

Your friend was an idiot, you were not.
As for Eiksmarka, you sure heard it loud and clear like a thunderclap far away. A neighbour in the third floor apartment even claimed to have heard the window rattle slightly (most likely because it wasn't fastened properly, I think, or that the neighbour was the rattled one).

DragonPetter

He is smart but he had a lapse in judgement or valued living life to the fullest experiences vs. living life to the longest, and definitely took a risk on himself. Anyway, he is lucky that nothing more happened in that location.

Have there been other scares in Oslo since then? I would think that the international attention of the olympics would raise everyone's awareness.

arildno

I thought you lived here in Norway, due to your "Petter"-nick.
But, I can't think of any particular scares we've had last year, if you discount the moose at Eiksmarka eating apples some time ago.
And, I almost forgot:
The invasion of disgusting brown slugs in the gardens has been particularly bad this year.

DragonPetter

The size and number of those slugs are quite amazing :D
Dragonpetter is in reference to petting a dragon haha, not the name Petter.

Mech_Engineer

Sounds like it turned out to be a very effective training excersise... it's good that they acted on the side of caution, especially since whatever they ended up finding under that car was meant to LOOK suspicious.

arildno

Indeed. It was so suspicious that only American guards at the Embassy were fooled by it.

Mech_Engineer

It was found underneath a car seeking access to the embassy (probably with one of the mirror inspections), what's the problem? If it looks like a bomb, can they really be expected to act any other way given they didn't know the car's history?

"Excuse me sir, I can't help but notice you seem to have something strapped underneath your car that looks something like a bomb..."
"Oh... yeah that was just left over from a training excersise earlier, it's fake I promise."
"Ah, well go ahead then..."

arildno

That would have been the Canadian response.

lisab

Regarding the bolded text: When terrorists bombed the Tanzanian capital many years ago, there were an unusual number of people who lost their sight. After the first bomb went off, everyone rushed to the windows to see what was going on. So when the second bomb went off, there they all were, standing in front of glass windows...

arildno

As it happened, Anders Behring Breivik had a partially completed second bomb at his farm of similar size to the one that did go off. He got into logistics problems, a) The process of reducing the pellets took longer time than he expected, b) He was unsure if he could get to hire yet another car, and c) unsure if he could manage to pull off a second explosion.

So, he dropped the whole thing, and made the Utøya massacre into his "bonus operation".