Police evacuated City College’s Mission Branch and closed down surrounding streets after a bomb threat was called in to SFPD Tuesday night.
Police arrived on the scene around 8:30 p.m., according to Officer Ted Russo. They closed off the four streets around the building at 1125 Valencia Street — Valencia, Bartlett, 22nd and 23rd — and evacuated the building itself, which had about 600 people inside.
At 10:30 p.m., only Bartlett Street remained closed.
According to Officer Martin Covarrubias, police found two suspicious packages in two classrooms.
By 10:30 p.m., police had determined that one of the packages did not contain dangerous substances, Covarrubias said. By 11:15 p.m., they had analyzed the second package and similarly found no sign of suspicious material.
It is not known who phoned in the threat.
“[Police] told everyone to leave,” said Nancy, a City College ESL teacher who declined to give her last name. “The police did a great job by keeping everyone safe.”
At first, Nancy said, police did not say why they were being evacuated.
“Everyone seemed very calm. [The police] got everyone out very fast,” she said. “I was impressed.”
Marty Triangos, a City College custodian, was also in the building when it was evacuated. “This was the first time I was ever evacuated,” he said. “I knew it was not a test, it was more chaotic. I was calm, not scared.”
By 11:30 p.m., police determined that it was safe to let people go back inside the building. Most students had already gone home, and the few instructors and staff who remained went inside to pick up their belongings.
Although there was a noticeable police presence in the area — several police cars and a fire truck-sized vehicle reading “Bomb Squad” — people in the neighborhood did not seem panicked. Police had determined that buildings near Bartlett and 22nd streets were safe and did not require any other evacuations, according to Covarrubias.
Music continued playing loudly down the street, and people sat outside on Revolution Cafe’s terrace, laughing.
Two workers at nearby Cava 22, who declined to give their names, said customers trickled into the bar to drink because the streets were closed off.
“People were not worried,” one worker said in Spanish. “They were calm.”
After police left the neighborhood and things settled down, customers at Revolution Cafe seemed unfazed by what had unfolded in front of them.
One customer, Angela Adler, said she used to live in Washington, D.C., on Pennsylvania Avenue, down the street from the White House.
“I’m used to this; it’s a daily experience,” Adler said.
Police on the scene did not say whether Tuesday’s scare is related to last month’s bomb scare outside of Salvation Army.