FIRE Brigade Commissioner Stewart Beckford on Monday expressed frustration at pranksters who, through bomb threats, cause disruption in the country and place at risk firefighters’ ability to respond quickly to real calls for help.

“It is just a grand waste of valuable, productive time. I yearn for the day when we would catch some of these culprits and make an example out of them,” Beckford told the Jamaica Observer after firefighters spent hours at Vauxhall and Meadowbrook high schools in Kingston and St Andrew, respectively, responding to bomb threats.

Students at both schools had to be sent home for the day.

Commissioner Beckford described the problem as painstaking, pointing out that students had to leave school, some parents had to leave work to pick up their children, and lamented an overall loss in productivity.

“We can’t just take it for granted that it is just a hoax, and don’t turn up. We have to turn up, as the protocol dictates, because you just don’t know when one of these will turn out to be true. That is the issue we face in terms of the uncertainty,” he said.

“It ties up resources that could be put to other uses. The members of the team have to turn up at these incidents and have to be at these locations for hours before they can leave. They have to wait until the ordinance and canine teams do a sweep of the buildings and give the all-clear — and this takes hours,” Beckford explained.

“We had around six hours of productive time being lost today (Monday). We have seen in the past where, through painstaking investigations, the police were able to crack some cases in terms of false alarms and public mischief and so on, but not necessarily bomb threats. I am hoping that not too long from now the investigative framework that is needed to give the police, the fire brigade, the other authorities [the ability] to track these persons and be able to pick them up and take them before the court, will improve,” the commissioner said.

Beckford told the Observer that JFB received a call from the police 119 emergency number about a bomb threat at Vauxhall and, in accordance with the protocol, two fire units — one from Rollington Town and the other from York Park Fire Station — were sent to the location to evacuate the occupants of the school. Canine teams were called in to sweep the entire school compound, Beckford said, pointing out that no bombs were discovered.

A similar operation took place at Meadowbrook High School afterwards.

Beckford said that about 11:10 am JFB received a call from the police, alerting them to a bomb threat at the school. Two units were also dispatched to that location to help clear the compound. Sniffer dogs were also dispatched to the location to search for bombs. No bombs were found.

Although no bombs were found at Vauxhall, administrators were not certain whether school would be back in session today. As for Meadowbrook, operations will continue as normal today, according to Principal Kevin Facey.

“We received what we thought was a credible threat. We responded in the way that we are supposed to. The authorities came, did their checks, and we were given an all-clear. As far as I can tell, school will be in session,” Facey said.

In 2023 there were more than 70 bomb threats at high schools, at least one hospital, and a court building. All were hoaxes.