KeyArena Bomb Threat

A bomb threat phoned in to the Seattle Center’s KeyArena January 23rd turned out to be a hoax, but the arena staff was ready for anything.

Center spokesman Perry Cooper said the threat came in with three minutes left in a basketball game between the Seattle SuperSonics and the Utah Jazz, and people were already heading out. Although staff suspected a hoax, procedures were followed to the letter.

“Our customer service operator received a bomb threat for ‘Key Center.’ [The caller] actually got the name of the venue wrong. We followed procedures in connecting our staff with the Seattle police that were on staff at KeyArena,” Cooper told Pollstar.

“The decision was made that since the game was almost over … to let the building empty and quickly evacuate from there, including canceling postgame interviews and any postgame meetings and stuff we have afterward.”

Once venue staff cleared out, police brought in bomb-sniffing dogs to check out the facility. No bomb was found, Cooper said.

“We’re very happy that things turned out well — that everybody got out and there were no incidents or any panic with it,” he said. “We do drills for this kind of thing. Fortunately, this essentially turned into a drill because nothing occurred.”

The center is home to numerous other facilities including the Space Needle, Mural Amphitheatre and Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, so phony bomb threats are phoned in on occasion.

“It’s not something that’s frequent and it’s not something that we want people to necessarily know is going on,” Cooper said. “We do want them to know that we constantly take care and take each one of them seriously.

“We have to make sure that our number one priority is the safety of our patrons,” he added.