U-M Science Building Bombed

U-M Science Building Bombed

By William B. Treml

(News Police Reporter)

A bomb placed outside a door of the University’s Institute of Science and Technology on the North Campus late last night blew out 12 large windows and damaged a side door.

The bombing was the second in Ann Arbor in less than three weeks. A Central Intelligence Agency recruiting office at 450 S. Main St. was the last on Sept. 29.

Police Chief Walter E. said the latest blast was and more powerful” than month’s bombing ‘‘but seems to be similar in nature.” He immediately contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation office and the same ‘‘bomb expert” who probed the CIA blast arrived here from Washington this noon to check the North Campus scene.

Ann Arbor police were called to the seven-story U-M science building about 11:45 p.m. yesterday after residents of the area reported hearing a “thunderous” report.

Chief Krasny and Senior Capt. Harold E. Olson said a preliminary investigation indicates the explosive—probably dynamite— was placed at the south edge of an entrance to a side door of the building. That door leads to an east wing of the structure and houses the optics section of a radar laboratory.

The police chief said no one was hurt and no fire followed the blast. He said one of three janitors in the closed building at the time had checked the door where the blast occurred less than five minutes before the bomb went off.

Krasny said the janitor opened the door from the inside, glanced outside and then closed the door and walked to another section of the building. The police chief said the bomb may have been in the doorway at the time or was placed there moments later.

Police said the extensive damage caused by the bomb indicates it was larger than the one used on the S. Main St. building last month.

“The concussion apparently was terrific,” Krasny said. “It was so powerful it sent a metal piece of that door rocketing down a hallway more than 80 feet and into a wooden door. The blast sucked the glass outward from the 12 windows it broke and twisted the steel doorframe like it was made of taffy.”

The sound of the explosion was heard throughout the north side of the city and police received more than a dozen calls from alarmed residents.

Police said the secluded area where the building is located, on North Campus Blvd. north of Veterans Hospital on Fuller Rd. apparently provided those who planted the bomb with adequate cover. The North Campus is little used late at night and few pedestrians or motorists use North Campus Blvd. at that point.

Chief Krasny said it is not felt at this time that a time bomb involving a clock mechanism was used in the blast. He said it is more likely a number of sticks of dynamite were tied together and an attached fuse was ignited.

The S. Main St. CIA building was believed bombed with five to six sticks of dynamite. No arrests have been made in that incident.

Police immediately sealed off the science building’s east wing after the bombing last night and newsmen were not permitted to enter the structure. Chief Krasny said only the width of a cement block wall separated the main force of the blast and the building’s main gas supply.

“Had that gas line ruptured we might have had a disaster,” the chief said.

One chunk of twisted metal from the frame of the double door was found 30 feet in front of the doorway while splintered glass from the 10-foot-high windows was being picked up neat a sidewalk 50 feet away this morning. 

The Michigan State Police sent a squad of bomb experts with their mobile crime laboratory vehicle to the scene this morning at Chief Karsny's request. It is expected the troopers will work with the FBI investigators in the probe. 

Ann Arbor Firemen were on the scene last night from their North Campus station moments after the first report was called in. The firemen manned flood lights and stood by with fire equipment until police ascertained there had been no fire damage.

The bombing is the 13th in the Detroit area in the past six weeks. Many of the blasts were aimed at U.S. government facilities or property, including the car of an army recruiter.

Chief Krasny called the persons involved in last night’s bombing “badly misinformed.”

“If they had in mind blowing up something dealing with secret government research they struck out pretty badly,” he said. “There was nothing in this building of that nature.”

A spokesman for the University’s Institute for Science and Technology said today that the side of the building where the explosion occurred is occupied by the institute's Great Lakes Research Disivion which has no classified research. 

Most of the institute's classigied research is being done at its Willow Run Airport laboratories, but some classified research for the Air Force and Army is being done in a branch of the Radar and Optics Laboratory which occupies a portion of the bombed wing, U-M officials said.

Damage was confined entirely to the building, including the shattering of all windows on the east side of the wing and heavy damage to the door and door frame on that side, the institute spokesman said. He said there was no damage to equipment inside the building.

A large part of the research being done by the Great Lakes Division is done at the North University Building on the main campus, while much of the Radar Optics Laboratory research is being done at Willow Run. The 10-story Institute of Science and Technology Building on the North Campus houses the head offices of the institute, as well as offices of some other University and non-University units.