Officials lifted evacuations on Saturday for parts of Peoria and East Peoria, neighboring cities in Illinois, after what a local official described as a bomb in an industrial area along the riverfront was rendered safe.
Mayor Rita Ali of Peoria, a city of 110,000 residents, said that emergency workers had discovered the bomb at the BioUrja ethanol plant on Friday, and that a one-mile radius around that facility had been evacuated on both sides of the Illinois River, which separates the two cities.
Law enforcement officials “have found no other items of concern at this time,” the Peoria Police Department said in a news release on Saturday.
The Peoria police chief, Brad Dixon, declined to comment early Saturday on whether BioUrja was specifically targeted and if there were suspects.
For hours on Friday evening, parts of Peoria and East Peoria were shut down as city, state and federal officials swarmed the ethanol plant. For much of that time, the emergency had been described only as a bomb threat, not a verified bomb.
It was not immediately clear how many people lived in the evacuation zone, which included commercial and residential areas.
Source: www.nytimes.com
