Parts of Peoria and East Peoria, neighboring cities in Illinois, were evacuated on Friday night after what a city official described as a bomb was found in an industrial area along the riverfront.
Mayor Rita Ali of Peoria, a city of 110,000 residents, said emergency workers had discovered a bomb at the BioUrja ethanol plant, and that a one-mile radius around that facility was evacuated on both sides of the Illinois River, which separates the two cities.
The Peoria police chief, Brad Dixon, said early Saturday that “bomb technicians rendered the package safe” on Friday night, but that a search of the facility was continuing and that the evacuation order remained in effect. He declined to comment on whether there were suspects.
In a separate news conference, Ms. Ali said that “we don’t know whether there’s one device or whether there’s multiple devices.” She described it as “a real crisis situation right now.”
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.
Officials from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were at the scene, and Illinois state troopers blocked traffic in the area. Jon Pardi, the country singer, canceled a concert in Peoria that had been scheduled for Friday, citing “an active local safety concern.”
State and federal officials, including Gov. JB Pritzker and Representative Darin LaHood, posted on social media that they were monitoring the situation and urged residents to heed evacuation orders. Ms. Ali told Peoria residents that they could take shelter in the basement of a local high school.
Chief Dixon said the ethanol plant received a bomb threat on Friday, and that officials located a suspicious package around 2 p.m. Several hours later, he said, “the package was deemed a credible threat” and “a blast radius was determined at one mile.” Hours after that, he said, the device was rendered safe.
He said emergency crews would continue to search the plant, a process that would likely go on for several hours. Peoria officials planned to provide more information around midday Saturday. Attempts to reach officials with BioUrja were not immediately successful.
Though bomb threats and brief evacuations are relatively common in the United States, it is far more rare for officials to find an explosive device that could pose a large-scale safety threat.
“Nationally, when a bomb threat comes in, typically, it’s not legitimate and they’re doing it to cause an evacuation of a building or something like that,” Chief Dixon said. “This is not the case here. We found a credible package that we deem to be a threat.”
