Wave of bomb threats clogs Estonia's emergency call lines in the morning

Wave of bomb threats clogs Estonia's emergency call lines in the morning, School in Tartu. Photo: Margus Ansu

The emergency call line 112 of Estonia's emergency response center became clogged on Thursday morning due to large numbers of calls from parties wanting to report a bomb threat they had received by email.

«There may have been a moment when all those who discovered this email called the emergency response center at once,» Pirko Parila, chief of operations at the North Prefecture of the Police and Border Guard Board, said. «But that overload happened for a moment, so we're not going to open a separate line because of the bomb threats,» the officer added.

Should it happen that the bomb threats are repeated and the lines to the emergency services are again busy, the first thing to do is to follow the Code of Conduct and evacuate the building, the chief of operations said.

On Thursday, a screenshot of a group chat on social media threatening to actually detonate bombs in public buildings on Friday circulated widely on the internet.

«We're adjourning it to tomorrow, everyone was evacuated today and there's no point in taking down empty buildings, without Estonian children,» the message read.

The police are aware of this conversation, Parila said.

«We are monitoring social media and we are aware of these chats,» she said. «We are looking into it with our partners and we are ready to mitigate these threats and tensions as well. For now, I can say that tomorrow's classes should not be called off.»

In addition to educational institutions, also media institutions, airports, bus and train stations and many other institutions in Estonia received the same email.

«The police initially inspected certain sites and we prepared a preliminary threat assessment,» Parila said, describing the events of Thursday morning.

Based on the threat assessment, it was understood that the email was an extensive spam endeavor.

«There is no real threat in Estonia today. The general message to everyone is that there is definitely no reason to panic,» the officer added.