This morning, Clackamas High School students were not expecting their “fire drill” to be an actual evacuation drill. Around 10:05 a.m students were told to exit out of the building to the football field and bleachers despite the rainy, windy weather conditions. North Clackamas High school, along with Rock Creek Middle School sent parents an email explaining that the evacuation was a result of a bomb threat. 

CHS Students stayed out in the field and bleachers for 1 hour as Clackamas High School worked with the Clackamas County Sheriff Office to investigate the bomb threat throughout the classrooms. The bomb threat was posted by the instagram account, “clack.confesses,” where they posted a confession made by a student warning that they planted a bomb under a table in a random classroom. As well as warning that the bomb would go off on November 2nd and that students would need to find it before it was too late.  

“At first it was scary, then the information got out and it became real,” recalled Megan Whitton, a student at CHS who was halfway through her acting class when she heard the fire alarm go off. Usually, under normal circumstances, the school notifies teachers when a planned fire drill will take place. This Thursday that was not the case. Thinking someone had pulled it, her teacher directed her class outside as they would normally for a fire drill. Then, after about 15 minutes, it all changed. Word had spread like a wildfire that it was in fact, not a fire drill, but a bomb threat. Many students came across the bomb threat before the evacuation, but many didn’t see the post until various students began passing their phones around to their friends to show them a screenshot of the threat. “I was weirded out. It was weirdly worded. I think they were trying to scare people,” said Megan. A great deal of students believed that the threat was made by one of the younger grades, which is why sophomores in particular had many thoughts regarding the threat. “When I saw the post from someone else, honestly I laughed because it didn’t seem like a legit threat. It seemed like a joke, but I’m still glad that the school took precautions because you never know, anything could happen, replied Ruth Abebaw, a Clackamas High school sophomore when asked how she felt when seeing the screenshot. Another student, Cameron Parsons also said, “I thought that it was a very fake looking threat and maybe someone was trying to make a messed up joke, but I get that we had to evacuate to keep our school safe.” 

Students, teachers, staff, and parents started to wonder: who was the student that posted the bomb threat? At 3:02, an email was sent from North Clackamas Schools that announced that “investigators were able to identify the source of the threat and determine it came from two students from another area high school.” The email stated that both of the high school students were taken into custody as well as being transported to the Clackamas County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center on charges. North Clackamas Schools believe that this was an isolated incident as the threat was proved to be fake. This unexpected evacuation is believed to have a large impact on the school community whether positive or negative. “I think it will help people realize that it’s not funny to joke around stuff like that because there are some things that are funny and some things that are not and a bomb threat is not. I think it’s a good lesson for the community, said Ruth, when asked how she thinks the school community will be affected by the situation. Along with teachers, and students, parents are also considered part of the school community. Following the North Clackamas Schools email, parents called their children to make sure they were safe, as well as asking for any additional information that they may have missed. “When I told my parents about the bomb threat they were obviously worried but I reassured them that we were outside and that we would be ok. They just told me to be safe and listen to the teachers,” says Ruth Abebaw.  

Except, this wasn’t the only threat that Clackamas High School has received. Barbara Sherman, a sophomore at CHS reflects back on her experience last year and says, “this happened last year because of a gun threat, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened again.” Last year’s gun threat also proved to be fake, but before students knew of that information they panicked, and just like this evacuation, they thought it was a regular lockdown drill. 

After the evacuation, some students didn’t feel like it was safe to go back to class as they were still in shock from what had happened. Which led to many students calling their parents to pick them up from school. As they leave the campus, they are also leaving another difficult event that will surely affect them and the North Clackamas School community in many ways.