The string of threatening but apparently harmless phone calls to Alaska schools continued Wednesday with calls to schools in Anchorage, Juneau, Talkeetna and Soldotna.
The FBI is investigating the spate of threats with Alaska State Troopers and local police, said FBI spokeswoman Staci Feger-Pellessier.
"Some of the calls are very similar," she said. "They're either computer-generated or automated messages."
Feger-Pellessier said Wednesday that she did not know the total number of threatening phone calls received by Alaska schools over the past several weeks. She said the FBI is investigating whether the calls are connected to telephone threats received by schools in the Lower 48.
On Wednesday, the Talkeetna call came while students were out of the building on a field trip, according to Joe Schmidt, school safety and emergency preparedness coordinator for the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District. Students stayed at the Sheldon Community Arts Hangar while staff checked for any threats, Schmidt said. There were none. Buses picked up students at the hangar.
The Mat-Su school district last week fielded a threat at another school, Pioneer Peak Elementary near Palmer, Schmidt said. The message said something about a person on the roof, but there was no one there, so school officials didn't evacuate any students.
That call, like others reported around the state, sounded "scratchy, like a recording" and hard to understand, with no chance to ask questions, he said. The Talkeetna call had a similar message.
In Juneau, threatening calls came into Mendenhall River Community School and Juneau-Douglas High School in the early afternoon Wednesday, according to a news release from the Juneau School District.
A suspicious phone call put Harborview Elementary into stay-put mode Monday, according to the school district. On May 7, it reported that its schools had received four threatening phone calls in six days. All were from a computer or electronic-sounding voice and pertained to a school shooting, according to the district.
In Anchorage, schools have also received threatening calls. Two schools received the phone calls Wednesday. Another school reported a threatening call Monday and another last week, said Heidi Embley, Anchorage School District spokeswoman. School resource officers were immediately notified. Two of the four schools went into stay-put mode. The others did not after speaking with police, Embley said.
Embley wouldn't name the schools that received the calls because, she said, "I don't think that provides a benefit to the community and it just causes fear in people unnecessarily." Parents are notified if their child's school goes into stay-put mode or lockdown, she said.
The calls also reached the Kenai Peninsula. Shortly after 1 p.m. Wednesday, two Kenai Peninsula Borough School District schools received automated phone calls with a threatening message. Troopers responded to Skyview Middle School and Soldotna police went to Kalifornsky Beach Elementary, which went into stay-put mode, according to a news release from Pegge Erkeneff, school district spokeswoman.
Alaska State Troopers recommended central Peninsula schools, including schools in Nikiski, Sterling, Soldotna, Kenai and Kasilof, also go into stay-put mode. The school district sent automated messages shortly after 2 p.m. to parents and guardians of students at the schools. The stay-put mode lasted less than an hour, Erkeneff said.
Threats have also been reported at schools in Glennallen and Fairbanks. Police have said the threats aren't credible.
Feger-Pellessier said that if a school receives a threat it needs to call local law enforcement. She also encouraged schools to treat each threat seriously.
"Stay with your protocol," she said.