California airport shut down in security scare

Updated at: 0801 PST, Wednesday, January 06, 2010
LOS ANGELES: A passenger whose bag tested positive for a "hazardous substance" at a California airport on Tuesday, prompting authorities to shut down the terminal and divert flights, said he was carrying only bottles of honey, police said.

The incident came as security jitters have gripped the United States since a botched Christmas Day attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound commercial flight from Amsterdam using explosives smuggled on board.

Meadows Field Airport in the central California city of Bakersfield, about 100 miles (160 km) north of Los Angeles, was shut down for two hours and two federal baggage screeners were taken to a local hospital after being exposed to "fumes" from bottles found in a piece of checked luggage.

Michael Whorf, spokesman for the Kern County Sheriff's Department, told Reuters that an initial test of the baggage and one of the bottles showed a positive result for two types of explosives.

However the owner of the bag, a 31-year-old man identified as Francisco Ramirez, told authorities that the bottles contained only honey and that he was visiting family in Bakersfield after traveling from Milwaukee.

"We're continuing to investigate what caused these test results to come up the way they have and to find out what's in the bottles," Whorf said.

Whorf said Ramirez, who was detained for questioning, had been booked on a flight to Milwaukee with a connection through San Francisco but that authorities were still checking out his story and that he was being cooperative.

Two TSA employees who were working near the suspicious bag were taken to a nearby hospital, where they were treated and released, spokeswoman Suzanne Trevino said.

"They are fine now," she said.

Meanwhile, a bomb-sniffing dog detected explosives in a piece of luggage at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Tuesday, prompting an evacuation of a terminal and delayed flight