Solano Community Colleges Evacuated Over Bomb Threat

FAIRFIELD (CBS13) — After hours of investigations and campus sweeps, all Solano community colleges have been deemed safe by law enforcement.

All three college campuses in Fairfield, Vacaville, and Vallejo were evacuated Monday afternoon after two anonymous bomb threats.

"We take every situation incredibly seriously, and this has affected hundreds and hundreds of people," said deputy Daniel Cully Pratt.

Solano County Sheriff's deputies say no explosive devises or packages were found. But the threats were certainly alarming for many students and staff.

"We all got the notification that there was a bomb threat," said student Reynold Deguzman.

Deguzman sat in a Fairfield coffee shop studying Monday night. He was one of the hundreds of Solano Community College students alerted to the threat via text. Deguzman was off campus at the time but witnessed the panic.

"When we were driving by, a whole bunch of students were rushing out; there was a lot of traffic," he said.

Sheriff's deputies and K9 teams swept each campus in Fairfield, Vacaville and Vallejo for hours.

"We have three explosive ordinance teams that are going classroom to classroom, building to building, to ensure the safety of the community," said Pratt.

Professor Jim Long was among the evacuees out of the Vacaville campus.

"We evacuated the building, and pretty quickly after that it was announced that that classes would be canceled," said Long.

This all started around noon Monday after two anonymous bomb threat phone calls.

Those calls were just 3 minutes apart from 2 separate callers, a male and female each stating there is a bomb on each campus.

The superintendent of Solano Community College issued mandatory evacuations.

"You're taking everyone away from focusing on school, you're holding everyone back from actually learning," said student Deguzman.

Deputies say the threats are taken seriously, and there's certainly been an uptick.

Just last week, two schools in the Sacramento region River City High School and Vista Del Lago High School in Folsom were placed on lockdown because of separate threats.

Now the hallways of a typically busy community college campus in Fairfield are empty.

"I think we should be ready for these, cause we have had too many of them happen to not be prepared," said convened mother Epheann Boyd of Fairfield.

Sheriffs detectives say they do believe the two calls are connected and are investigating the source. They say the consequences of a hoax call are serious and could lead to felony charges.

Meanwhile, according to the Solano Community College Facebook page, Tuesday and Wednesday are professional development days for faculty and staff. All classes on all campuses resume on Thursday.