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Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION

Evacuation ends at Canwest Place

By: Staff Writer

19/02/2009 3:54 PM | Comments: 4

MIKE DEAL / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Enlarge Image

Hundreds of workers left Canwest Place in Winnipeg's downtown after a threat was received Thursday morning.

Workers have returned to Canwest Place, a 33-storey building on the northwest corner of Portage Avenue and Main Street, that was evacuated over the noon hour after reports of a bomb threat.

A police spokesman said authorities were summoned to the buidling at about 10:15 a.m. by the building's owner after a threat was received at the site.

Const. Dan Ricard would not say which floor of the building received the threat, nor would he describe its contents. Police were searching the building, he said.

Only emergency personnel were left in the building, Ricard said, just before noon.

Some of the hundreds of workers who left the building said the evacuation was largely orderly and calm.

"Apparently there's a bomb threat," said Arthur Cramer, an IT specialist with Regina-based grain company Viterra, which has offices on Canwest Place's 31st floor.

Police ordered workers to leave and asked people not to gather in Canwest Place's plaza facing Fort Street.

Many building workers collected in nearby shops and on sidewalks. Some workers with an unnamed investment firm gathered around a table at a Fort Street Subway store and carried on with their work on their BlackBerries.

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