Possible Redmond ‘bomb’ was geocache instead

An intersection in an industrial area of northeast Redmond was blocked off for over an hour and nearby businesses notified Wednesday after someone found a suspicious object in a sign near the corner, police said. What it turned out to be was part of a popular treasure-hunt game called geocaching.

Maintenance worker Scott Dame was cleaning the Pioneer Business Park sign near the corner of NE Ninth Street and Hemlock Avenue when he found the unusual object and contacted police shortly before 10 a.m., thinking it could be a bomb, police Capt. Brian McNaughton said.

“I didn’t want to pull the wire, because I thought it was a pin, and that it would pull up and may be a bomb — who knows these days?” Dame said later. “People do weird things.

McNaughton said they didn’t know at first if it was a dangerous object, so the Oregon State Police Bomb Squad was contacted in Salem to possible come, inspect and, if necessary, render the object harmless.

But before they could arrive, police learned it was a container found and added to by about 90 geocachers since it was placed there in 2009, the most recent just a couple of weeks ago.

The container no longer will be hiding in the sign’s shovel, as the property owners removed it.