KE­JAN HANYES

Through­out the coun­try yes­ter­day, chil­dren were out of class­rooms and on the streets af­ter an emailed bomb threat trig­gered emer­gency evac­u­a­tions.

It’s un­clear which school was the first to re­ceive the email that prompt­ed a re­sponse but by 9 am, there were re­ports that Hillview Col­lege, St Au­gus­tine Girls’ High School and Bish­op’s Cen­te­nary Col­lege were all evac­u­at­ing their com­pounds.

Stu­dents were shuf­fled to muster points. Some were on the school’s com­pounds, oth­ers in near­by parks. Most were told to leave all their be­long­ings, in some cas­es, back­packs, cell phones or lunch bags, un­til po­lice could sweep the ar­eas. Some were told they’d have to col­lect on Mon­day.

It soon be­came clear it was not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent.

In a re­lease, the TTPS said of­fi­cers through­out all ten di­vi­sions, in­clud­ing of­fi­cers from SIU, the Cy­ber Crime Unit and Bomb Tech­ni­cians, re­spond­ed to the threats, along with the Fire Ser­vice. How­ev­er, no de­vices were found, nor was any­one in­jured.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley lat­er con­demned the at­tack in a re­lease, call­ing it an “evil ac­tion” done by “ter­ror­ist mis­cre­ants” whom he promised the se­cu­ri­ty forces would lo­cate.

“This evil ac­tion of or­gan­ised bomb threats on­ly serves to demon­strate how vul­ner­a­ble we all are to the wiles of those who would harm us,” he said.

“I con­demn, in the strongest terms, these ac­tions which are clear­ly meant to dis­rupt the coun­try, even as oth­ers set out to desta­bilise the so­ci­ety.”

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion al­so quick­ly con­firmed and con­demned the email threat, as did To­ba­go’s Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion.

“I re­al­ly want to make a call, I want to make a per­son­al call on be­half of our chil­dren, ask­ing those who are in­volved in this to un­der­stand the reper­cus­sions that desta­bil­is­ing our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has on our chil­dren,” Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said at a hasti­ly called me­dia con­fer­ence at the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­firmed that be­fore 8 am, a mass email was sent out to schools and po­lice sta­tions, warn­ing of ex­plo­sives be­ing set on school com­pounds.

By noon, at the time of the me­dia con­fer­ence, 55 schools, in­clud­ing pri­ma­ry schools and EC­CE cen­tres, had re­port­ed re­ceiv­ing the threat. How­ev­er, Gads­by-Dol­ly said that num­ber could be greater if on­ly be­cause the email went to junk fold­ers and of­fi­cials could have re­ceived the threat with­out know­ing.

“We had two di­vi­sions (Ca­roni and North East) that the threat went to the po­lice,” Gads­by-Dol­ly said.

“So, they in­formed us that they re­ceived a threat that spoke to all of the schools in their dis­trict.”

The TTPS said the Port-of-Spain Di­vi­sion re­ceived four threats, West­ern Di­vi­sion, five, North Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, three, East­ern Di­vi­sion, 13, South West­ern Di­vi­sion, five, To­ba­go Di­vi­sion, five, South­ern Di­vi­sion, 13, and Cen­tral Di­vi­sion, six.

The email came from a bee­ble.com ac­count, which is de­signed to be a “pri­vate se­cure email and en­crypt­ed cloud stor­age with­out third-par­ty ac­cess.”

“This means that nei­ther we, nor any third par­ty can de­crypt the in­for­ma­tion we store and ac­cess the con­tents of let­ters or files with­out the user’s knowl­edge,” in­for­ma­tion on the web­site stat­ed.

When asked if there was a school’s mail­ing list which some­body could ac­cess to ac­quire so many schools’ email ad­dress­es, Gads­by-Dol­ly said there was, and many peo­ple had ac­cess to it.

“The mail­ing lists do ex­ist and they are not res­i­dent in the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion head of­fice alone, they will be res­i­dent in dis­trict of­fices, and so on, there are prin­ci­pal fra­ter­ni­ties where prin­ci­pals email each oth­er and so on, she said.

“So, there are a num­ber of ar­eas where any­one with ne­far­i­ous de­sires can ac­cess the email ad­dress­es of the prin­ci­pals. Be­cause of ne­ces­si­ty, it is shared in some cas­es.”

The min­is­ter stopped short of say­ing it could have been some­one from in­side the min­istry or school sys­tem. She said the min­istry’s IT di­vi­sion was work­ing to­geth­er with the TTPS to trace ex­act­ly where it may have come from.

Gads­by-Dol­ly praised school prin­ci­pals who fol­lowed pro­to­col and act­ed swift­ly.

In the event of a threat, prin­ci­pals are ex­pect­ed to in­form their school su­per­vi­sor, who then in­forms the di­rec­tor of school su­per­vi­sion, who then in­forms the min­istry’s ex­ec­u­tive.

“It was very ex­pe­di­ent,” she said.

“Par­ents, and I’m sure, teach­ers, can say to you that as soon as the prin­ci­pals got word, we were in­formed. They had the in­struc­tions. It’s been ex­pe­di­ent. But cer­tain­ly, the min­istry can­not ac­count for per­sons who would be so reck­less and ir­re­spon­si­ble to do this to chil­dren.”

She al­so heaped praise on the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ap­pa­ra­tus for their swift re­sponse but ac­knowl­edged be­cause of the sheer vol­ume of schools in­volved, the po­lice would not have been able to get to every school swift­ly in or­der to sweep the com­pounds.

Yes­ter­day’s threat came just as schools were be­gin­ning the oral ex­ams and PE prac­ti­cals for CSEC and CAPE.

She ex­plained that in those 15 schools, any stu­dents who may have been af­fect­ed would be resched­uled with­in the pe­ri­od set aside for all ex­am­i­na­tions.

Gads­by-Dol­ly con­tend­ed sim­i­lar threats could oc­cur in the fu­ture but saw nowhere where ad­just­ments could be made to the pro­to­col in the short-term.