Hanford returned to business as usual by 3 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday after an apparent false alarm over reports of shots being fired.
“We have found no evidence to suggest there was an active shooter,” the Benton County Sheriff’s Office posted on its Facebook page Tuesday afternoon.
Hanford officials believe the reported shots were some type of work-related noise, and the sheriff’s office is still trying to discover the cause of the shot-like noise, said Paul Noel, a U.S. Department of Energy spokesman at Hanford. “They’re trying to pinpoint the exact cause,” he said.
The noise occurred in central Hanford’s 200 East area, which borders Hanford’s radioactive waste vitrification plant. “There’s a lot of construction in that area,” Noel said.
The shot-like noises occurred at about 10:40 a.m. The Hanford site went into a lockdown condition in which people stayed in their buildings with some barricading themselves in their rooms. This is standard procedure when this type of alarm occurs, Noel said.
The noise came from inside or from near the 2750E Building, which is an administrative budding populated mostly by employees of Washington River Protection solutions, which manages Hanford’s 177 underground tanks and the radioactive wastes in them. About 200 people worked in the 2750E Building, and they were evacuated.
By 1 p.m., the lockdown was lifted. But the evacuees from the 275oE buying were still being interviewed, and law officers from the Tri-Cities, sheriff’s department and Hanford security went through the 2750E Building to hunt for a shooter and victim. None was found.
By 3 pm. all employees, including the people from 2750E Building, had returned to work, Noel said.
