A series of bomb threats early Sunday morning forced the evacuation of the entire Southwest Quadrangle for 90 minutes and cCarthy Hall for three hours.

According to Darryl Harrison, director of the Department of Public Safety, someone called DPS at 1:52 a.m. saying that “there was a bomb in McCarthy and we needed to get the kids out.”

The caller contacted authorities shortly thereafter saying that this was not a joke, Harrison said.

A third call was received and at 3:30 a.m. DPS officers contacted university officials and the Metropolitan Police Department and began to evacuate Kennedy, Reynolds and McCarthy Halls.

University administrators opened numerous buildings for the evacuated students, including the ICC and the Village C Alumni Lounge.

By 5 a.m., the residents of Reynolds and Kennedy Halls were allowed to return to their rooms, but the ICC and the Alumni Lounge remained filled with students from McCarthy Hall.

Four MPD cruisers including a car filled with police dogs, one PD van and two DPS cars were parked at the scene. Police officers scoured McCarthy for explosives.

While some students talked excitedly, others lay on the floor of the Alumni Lounge with newspapers covering their faces, trying to catch up on sleep.

Christian Dully (SFS ’07) said that he had been woken up at 3:45 a.m. by the fire alarm.

“DPS officers came and knocked on all of the doors telling us to get out and then they got a key to let us into the Alumni Lounge,” he said. “We’ve just been trying to figure out what’s going on.”

Harrison said that DPS conducted an initial sweep of all of the floors of McCarthy and MPD explosives experts conducted a follow-up sweep shortly thereafter. A room-to-room search was conducted and no explosives were found, he said. At 6:20 a.m. residents of cCarthy were allowed back in their building.

Police currently have no leads in the case, Harrison added.