A security scare a couple of weeks ago shut down certain parts of the Newark Liberty Airport. Parts of the airport were shut down and evacuated when a checked bag set off a radiation alert. But the holiday travel fiasco only got worse when bomb squad teams were called in to Terminal A at Newark Liberty to investigate a suspicious piece of luggage.According to passenger Chris Burdette, "They just said there's a security breach of some nature, and we just got piled into that line back there and all we saw was emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle going by, but nobody was telling us what was going on."
Passengers were forced to evacuate the terminal and some were even forced to stand outside in the cold for more than an hour. "We came in a taxi. They just dropped us in the middle of nowhere and we just had to stand there in the cold for 40 minutes," according to Joan Dugan, another passenger at the terminal.
But what caused the scare? According to reports, police flagged a passenger's checked bag due to the fact that it was emitting radiation. However, it was later discovered that the bag simply contained a computer monitor. The weird thing is that computer monitors usually emit only small amounts of radiation. Within an hour the police gave the all-clear.
According to Stan Shores, another passenger, "This is the second time this has happened to us in two consecutive Christmases. It happened to us in Minneapolis so it can happen anywhere." While the delay was frustrating to many and scared many passengers, a lot of people came to the consensus "better safe than sorry".
According to Federal Authorities, the investigation into what exactly happened is still ongoing. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) stated, in between pat-downs, that the monitor was going to the same destination as its owner and that there was never any danger.
Source: CBS New York
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