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Suspicious packages cause town evacuation
BARNESVILLE, Georgia (CNN) -- Authorities evacuated downtown Barnesville on Friday after eight or nine packages that appeared to be pipe bombs were found within a few blocks of each other, though the first five packages examined contained no explosives. The packages that contained what appeared to be pipes wrapped in duct tape with nails and wires protruding from both ends were found in a four-block area of downtown around 8 a.m., authorities said. "We have not found live explosives, or what we believe to be live explosives, in any of the ... devices we've disrupted so far," said Rusty Andrews of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation's bomb squad. "We have to treat each device as a live device until proven otherwise." He would not divulge how the devices were constructed, but said all of them were similar in appearance. "If they are hoax devices, they certainly have been fixed up to resemble live devices," he said. No notes were found and police said they have no leads. Barnesville is 50 miles south of Atlanta and has about 6,000 residents. Authorities sent officers door-to-door to notify people inside the approximately 15 businesses near the scene. Two day-care centers were also evacuated "out of an abundance of caution," as were the elementary school, middle school and high school, Police Chief Chuck Keadle told reporters. None of the devices was found near any of the schools or day-care centers, Keadle added. "We've had bomb threats before, but we've never had a multiple number of them," he said. About 150 law enforcement officers were on the scene from a variety of state and local agencies. The Federal Aviation Administration was called, and created a "no-fly zone" for 3 miles around the city to eliminate the chance that shrapnel could hit a plane. By 1 p.m., bomb technicians had detonated five of the packages, and none resulted in a secondary explosion, said John Bankhead, a spokesman for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation. All of the devices appeared to have been left in plain sight. Authorities were planning to search the downtown area for hidden devices before allowing residents to return. Andrews would not predict when that might be. Under Georgia law, leaving hoax bombs is a felony.
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