NDSU orders campus evacuated due to bomb threat

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FARGO, N.D. (AP) — Thousands of students and workers streamed out of North Dakota State University buildings Friday after officials said they had received a bomb threat and needed the campus clear within a half hour.

President Dean Bresciani said the threat came in a “telephone call to the campus” but gave no details on who received the call or what the caller said. Bresciani said he was aware of another bomb threat Friday morning at the University of Texas at Austin but did not know of any others.

Neither university officials nor Fargo police would say whether the threats at NDSU might be related to those in Texas. Fargo police Lt. Joel Vettel also declined to provide details on the call to NDSU.

Freshman Caleb Helbling, of Faribault, Minn., said he was walking into an engineering class just before 10 a.m. when someone else came in and said there was a bomb threat and students needed to leave. As he was walking out, he received an automated call to his cell phone about the evacuation. He went to a Pizza Hut kitty-corner from campus to pass time and have lunch.

Other students said they were notified by email, voice and text messages.

Bresciani said NDSU's the main campus was evacuated, along with the school's downtown campus and its agricultural facilities. He said it's difficult to evacuate 20,000 people immediately, but most of the evacuation happened within a matter of minutes.

“As you can see, the place is vacant,” he said at a news conference held off campus. “That largely took place in a matter of minutes.”

More than 14,000 students are enrolled at NDSU.

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