Law enforcement, EMS and fire personnel responded to Northside High School on Wednesday after a student alerted administrators to a bomb threat.

Students, teachers and staff were evacuated from the school for approximately an hour, awaiting the all-clear signal to move back inside. According to Maj. Charlie Rose, with the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office, school grounds, outbuildings and the school proper were searched, but deputies found no indication that the bomb threat was real.

Rose said the handwritten threat was found in one of the men’s rooms on campus, and investigators will be working with administrators and the school’s surveillance to identify the person responsible.

A bomb threat to a school is a felony, regardless of the age of the perpetrator, he said.

“If a charge was to be filed, it would be felony — it would just a matter of whether it went through the adult system or juvenile court system,” Rose said.

According to Sarah Hodges, public information officer for Beaufort County Schools, bomb threats within the school system have been sporadic through the years, though in 2010, three local teenagers were charged with felonies with making four bomb threats at Southside High School in a single month. Even if a threat is thought to be false, BCS employees and law enforcement must treat each incident as if it’s legitimate, Hodges said.

“There are two things we do every single time: first of all, we evacuate regardless.

We are not going to make the judgment as to whether something is a legitimate threat or not. That’s just not in our wheelhouse with so many lives in our hands. We’re going to evacuate no matter what,” Hodges said. “Second, we try to stay in absolute communication with parents. We do a connect call to the parents as soon as we know we’re going to evacuate. … We get the situation started, then we step back for law enforcement when they arrive on the scene.”

Hodges said it’s administrators’ hope that parents become involved by discussing with their children the serious consequences that come with making a threat, even as a joke.

“What we want parents to help us to do, is tell the students that this a punishable offense by law,” Hodges said. “We want parents to tell them, ‘You’re breaking the law doing this — you’re not just getting out of class.’”