It is reported that a bomb threat at the Evraz steel plant in north Regina early April 8th 2011 morning turned out to be a hoax, but an employee questions why the night shift was not immediately alerted to evacuate the building.

According to the Regina RCMP, a 911 call from a Regina pay phone at 5: 30 AM indicated there was a bomb at the plant, located on Armour Road.

The initial investigation involved the Regina RCMP, including an explosives technician and a police service dog. After the facilities were evacuated, some employees joined the massive search for the bomb.

After all teams reported nothing suspicious had been found at any facilities, Evraz management consulted with the RCMP and the bomb squad before giving the all clear.

Mr Hamilton VP of employee relations and talent management is based in Chicago, but happened to be in Regina on April 8th 2011. At 11: 15 AM, he spoke to reporters outside the plant and said immediate steps were taken to secure the safety of employees and all of the facilities were evacuated.

When the Leader Post contacted Mr Hamilton mid afternoon about the employee's concern, he said the company would be reviewing the incident as quickly as possible. He added that "I've heard from some of our people that they originally thought, through miscommunication, that it was a threat against the melt shop specific and so likely that was the first facility that was evacuated. Upon further review, it was determined that it wasn't specific to the melt shop, that it was more general to Regina Steel and we interpreted that as the entire site and then evacuated the entire site."

Mr Hamilton said that "We had teams of two employee volunteers that went out into the operations, because they know those operations better than anybody. They swept our facilities looking for anything that was suspicious. We set up a command centre on site and all of those people, when they were finished their sweeps were to come back to us and report what they had found."

Mr Hamilton said that "Based on all of the intelligence that we had at that point, we believed that it was safe for our employees to return to work."

He called the company's president in Portland and recommended that employees return to work. He added that "He supported that decision."

(Sourced from www.leaderpost.com)