CAMDEN, Maine — A camouflage backpack led to a section of downtown Camden being shut down on a busy Friday afternoon.
A Maine State Police bomb squad was called in and detonated the backpack after more than three hours.
The incident began shortly before 1:30 p.m. when the Camden postmaster found the backpack resting against the wall of the post office on the Bay View Street side adjacent to Camden National Bank, Camden police Sgt. Daniel Brown said Friday.
Postal authorities decided to call the police because of the alerts sent out to police departments across the country from Homeland Security because of a potential higher risk of terrorist activity.
Camden police and Fire Department officers cordoned off the area, preventing foot and vehicle traffic on that section of Bay View Street. The local police contacted state police, which sent a bomb squad.
The squad made a decision to detonate the backpack, which turned out to contain personal items including clothing.
At about 7:30 p.m., the owner of the backpack came forward and was apologetic, Brown said. The Camden man had set it down around midnight and forgot it.
The owner returned to Bay View Street after the incident to try to find it and realized that his backpack caused the scare.
Brown said state police agreed with the Camden decision to call them in, saying this was the third such incident in the past few days in Maine.
The street was reopened about 5 p.m.