West Acres Mall Confirms Emergency Procedure

Sorry, this video is no longer available

Emergency procedures at West Acres Mall are in question after Tuesday night’s bomb hoax.

Officials say there is a proper procedure in place for emergency evacuations.

KVRR’s Brittany Ford reports.

A bomb threat came in to West Acres Mall around 6 pm Tuesday evening.
But mall employees did not receive any alert until an hour later.

Mall officials say the Homeland Security Bomb threat checklist is what they use for emergencies, but it is unclear if it was used last night.

“Every time there is something you can take away and say yes we did those things right and there are some things that we can do better. Each time there’s an incident even one yesterday that was not credible threat we still learn from it,” said CEO of West Acres Mall Brad Schlossman.

After reviewing the call, police and security confirmed that it was not a credible threat.

West Acres contacted police after receiving the phone call just after six p.m. last night. Fargo police told us in cases like these knowing if a call is credible or not comes from past experiences.

“The credibility of any threat is not an exact science, but certainly we have some past experience in these types of calls. The training and experience the supervisors have on scene,” said Lt. Joel Vettel Fargo Police.

Even though the threat was not credible, people we talked to still are worried about the possibility.

“That it was a hoax makes me a little bit uncomfortable, because our world and society is a little bit unsettled. I think for someone to do that and play on the fears of people locally just isn’t the right thing to do,” said Fargo Resident Kenton Cargiel.

Mall officials did say they should have contacted employees earlier, and that every store received a hand copy of the Homeland Security emergency plan.

Brittany Ford, KVRR News.

Authorities say the mall is safe for shoppers and employees.