Bomb Hoax in Palo Alto

[CalTrain, commute]

Small chaos this morning on CalTrain's Palo Alto platform:

"A Santa Clara County bomb squad was studying two suspicious packages that closed part of the Palo Alto transit center this morning, two brick-sized packages are gift-wrapped like "birthday presents and there is a ticking sound coming from the area," said police Palo Alto Sgt. Sandra Brown. The packages were found on top of an electrical box behind the MacArthur Park Restaurant.

The report of the two boxes came in at 7:30 a.m. and by 8:10 a.m. police closed the transit center, the bus depot and the transit center were closed and Santa Clara Valley Transit Authority and Samtrans buses were being rerouted along El Camino Real.

CalTrain and Amtrak trains were rolling through the station and stopping about 200 yards down from the platform and passengers were being escorted away, Brown said."

Conductors on the train told us to 'not use the tunnel,' and that we would be arriving on the opposite (south-bound) platform. Problem was, nobody was sure how to cross the tracks without using one of the tunnels so after a moment of pondering, most of us proceeded to use the southern-most tunnel/ underpass.

A very helpful uniformed officer told us, "there are no busses here," and send us down the sidewalk in front of the restaurant toward El Camino. Frankly, the lack of busses was fairly obvious – the numerous squad cars and orange cones blocking traffic made it fairly clear that there would be none any time soon.

A Santa Clara County bomb squad determined two suspicious packages that closed part of the Palo Alto transit center today were gift-wrapped bricks, Palo Alto police Sgt. Sandra Brown said.

At 10:06 a.m., after the bomb squad took X-ray images of the packages, they determined them to be harmless bricks and re-opened the Palo Alto transit center, Brown reported.

The incident disrupted transit for more than two hours.

ABC 7 News (KGO) filed this video report: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=local&id=4970977