Substance that prompted Meadows Field evacuation turns out to be honey
| Tuesday, Jan 05 2010 10:15 AM
Last Updated Tuesday, Jan 05 2010 09:22 PM
Two airlines serve Meadows Field, with 17 flights and 940 total seats a day.
US Airways flies to Phoenix.
United Express flies to Denver, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Images:
With the Meadows Field terminal behind him, Kern County Airports Director Jack Gotcher takes calls after the terminal was shut down following the finding of an substance later found to be honey.
As Meadows Field's Thomas Terminal looms in the background, Kern County firemen wait as the sheriff's bomb squad prepares to check sports drink bottles containing an unidentified substance.
The Kern County Bomb Squad prepares to check a substance in the Meadows Field terminal that later was determined to be honey. The terminal was shut down and evacuated while authorities secured the material.
A member of the Kern County sheriff bomb squad gives a thumbs up after moving equipment, including a motorized robot, into the Meadows Field terminal to check a substance that later proved to be honey.
A massive investigation at Meadows Field Airport involving hazardous materials experts, a bomb squad and the temporary evacuation and closure of the airport was all triggered by some bottles of honey.
A gardener from Milwaukee was detained — then later released — by the Kern County Sheriff’s Department Tuesday after honey was found in his baggage checked at William M. Thomas Terminal.
Transportation Security Administration spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said screeners did their jobs and were right to be cautious. The nation’s commercial airline system has been on heightened alert since an accused militant smuggled explosives onto a jetliner on Christmas Day and tried to detonate them.
“I think this was an example of TSA working well with the airport as well as with our partners in local law enforcement to ensure that passengers remain safe at all times,” Trevino said.
Francisco Ramirez, 31, had been in Bakersfield visiting his sister. At about 6:55 a.m., he checked one suitcase and attempted to take a carry-on bag aboard a plane bound for San Francisco, intending to catch a connecting flight home to Milwaukee, authorities said. The checked bag went through a routine screening through a Transportation Security Administration scanner and set off an alarm.
Screeners then opened the bag and found it contained five Gatorade bottles that didn’t appear to contain the sports drink, Sheriff Donny Youngblood said.
They did a swab test of the interior of the bag and the exterior of the bottles, which tested positive for an explosive, the sheriff said.
Another kind of test was positive for a different explosive, Youngblood said.
At that point, Transportation Security Officers opened one of the bottles and tested the substance.
The amber liquid in the bottle reacted with test chemicals and caused fumes that made the employees nauseous.
“We don’t know if that’s because there was something really going on or if the employees were just nervous. These are tense times, but we wanted to be sure, obviously,” Michael Whorf, a sheriff’s department spokesman, said at the time.
The two TSA employees were taken to a hospital as a precaution, but were released shortly afterward and were fine. TSA officials would not identify the employees.
Ramirez told investigators the bottles contained honey relatives gave him during his visit. Sheriff’s officials said he cooperated with their investigation.
A Los Angeles bomb squad chemist tested the liquid at a Lerdo Jail property and shortly before 6 p.m. confirmed it was honey. No explosive material was found.
The preliminary tests done at the airport were positive for TNT and TATP, two extremely volatile explosives, the sheriff said.
That’s why hazardous materials experts and a bomb squad were called to examine the bag and its contents and determine if other threats existed elsewhere in the airport.
“If it is a real (bomb) there may be others,” Youngblood said Tuesday morning as searches were taking place.
At about 11:20 a.m., hazardous materials officials emerged from the terminal with the substance in a white bucket. The firefighter who brought it out and loaded it onto a vehicle was hosed off.
The Sheriff’s Department and Kern County Fire Department responded about 7:30 a.m. and passengers were taken by bus to the nearby International Terminal to wait while emergency crews did their work.
One inbound flight was diverted to the International Terminal and another was diverted to Los Angeles International Airport before Meadows Field reopened about 1:15 p.m., TSA’s Trevino said.
There is nothing inherently in honey that would trigger a false positive in an explosives test, said Sue Cobey, a staff research associate for the Department of Entomology at UC Davis. The only scenario she could envision was a foraging bee bringing pesticide or fertilizer residue back to a hive.
Highly explosive fertilizer was used in the 1995 bombing of an Oklahoma City federal building that killed 168.
It’s not at all unrealistic to think terrorists would target or try to make use of Meadows Field, Youngblood said. The flight in question was headed to San Francisco, “which is not a little bitty airport,” he said.
