Recent Bomb Threat at Chelan Co. Courthouse Prompts Action from Commissioners

This month’s bomb threat at the Chelan County Courthouse has prompted county commissioners to take action.

Chelan County Commissioner, Kevin Overbay, says the process of evacuating the campus’ buildings went smoothly but the incident provides an opportunity for improvement.

“Any time something like this happens it gives us an opportunity to improve upon our response should it occur again and put mechanisms in place to mitigate what should happen and to make sure that everybody handles the situation appropriately.”

The commissioners have scheduled a meeting for Tuesday, June 28 to discuss what happened during the threat and draft a new set of protocols for future instances.

“We’re actually going to hold a special department heads and elected (officials) meeting,” explained Overbay. “We’re going to take a look at and go over was it (evacuation) good, was it bad, did we have to do some things that we haven’t had to do ever in past. And then taking that information, we’ll actually put together a better response plan.”

Overbay says the bomb threat was the first of its kind during his tenure as commissioner and the county currently has no specific protocols for such an incident.

The evacuation on June 15 included the transport of over 80 inmates from the Chelan County Regional Justice Center to the nearby Juvenile Detention Center.