"Human error"

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Innsbruck's main railway station has already been the scene of two bomb threats this year.

(Bild: Johanna Birbaumer/Krone KREATIV)

In addition to the dozens of threats in Austria, the bomb scare at Innsbruck's main and west train station the previous week has had a curious aftermath: As has now become known, the police overlooked the e-mail with the warning. It went unnoticed for several hours. By the time it was finally read, the ultimatum had long since expired.

Graz, Linz, Salzburg, Klagenfurt, St. Pölten, Bregenz, Eisenstadt - and Innsbruck: a whole series of bomb threats against Austrian train stations keeps the police on their toes almost every day. In most cases, the buildings were evacuated. In the Tyrolean capital - where, in addition to the main station, the Westbahnhof was also affected - they were not.

But why not? "This is decided on a case-by-case basis. There was no need here," said the Tyrol police on Friday after the threat on Thursday evening was made public. 

It was an individual, human error.

Polizeisprecher Stefan Eder

Email went unnoticed for hours
Now the real reason has leaked out. And it is explosive! Because: the bomb threat against the two Innsbruck train stations, which was received by the provincial police headquarters by email on Thursday afternoon, was simply "overlooked". "It was an individual, human error," police spokesman Stefan Eder confirmed to the "Krone" in a TT report.

Innsbruck's Westbahnhof was also affected (archive photo).

(Bild: Christian Forcher, Krone KREATIV)

The e-mail with the bomb threat was only noticed and read at around 9 p.m. - some five hours later! The main station and Westbahnhof were then immediately searched by explosives experts and explosives detection dogs. "Nothing was found. There was no danger to anyone at any time," recalled Eder.

Ultimatum had long since expired
"The delay" was one of the main reasons why the stations were ultimately not evacuated and train services continued to run normally, Eder continued. According to the TT report, the incident command made this decision because the ultimatum from the unknown author of the bomb threat had long since expired at this point.

"Internal measures taken"
"A mistake was made", spokesperson Stefan Eder clarifies. The company has already reacted internally and taken measures to ensure that "something like this cannot happen again in the future".

The fact that the "purely administrative" mailbox in question was not viewed for several hours instead of every hour was an "individual human error", state police director Helmut Tomac also told journalists after the case became known on Wednesday afternoon. It is generally "unique" and "completely unusual" for such an email to be sent to the address in question.

We have to live with the mistake and learn from it.

Landespolizeidirektor Helmut Tomac

In any case, the otherwise "conscientious" employee had been verbally instructed. As a consequence, the affected email inbox will be checked more closely in future and by two separate instances. Tomac emphasized that he was not trying to "whitewash" the incident: "We have to live with the mistake and learn from it".

However, there is still no trace of the unknown perpetrator, the author of the threats. It cannot be ruled out that this is a serial offender. The state offices for state security and counter-extremism are investigating.

Almost a dozen threats in Austria
Closed train stations, evacuated schools and mysterious threats: Almost a dozen bomb threats have been reported in Austria in the last few days. An end to this series is hardly in sight, as there were incidents in Graz, Linz and Feldkirch on Tuesday alone.

The latter incident also led to a mix-up - the police also had to respond to Feldkirchen in Carinthia. The series began at the end of September and since then there have been similar warnings almost every day. The targets of the threats have so far been schools and train stations.