Perhaps the biggest reason that the attempted bombing of the Martin Luther

Published 8:00 am Friday, March 11, 2011

Perhaps the biggest reason that the attempted bombing of the Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade in Spokane in January is called an “attempted bombing” and not just a “bombing” is because a trio of city-contracted workers found the bomb on a bench and called police. Those workers, however, apparently didn’t do it right. And soon after the bomb was disabled, they were fired.The AP reports that Mark Steiner, Brandon Klaus, and Sherman Welpton lost their jobs with the Labor Ready temp agency hours after finding the explosive, though the details have only now been released since the suspect Kevin William Harpham was arrested this week. Kevin Twohig, head of the city’s public facilities, district tells The Spokesman Review that the men deserve praise, but that “they were messing around with the bomb.”The three have denied doing anything to the explosive other than opening the backpack it was in, discovering the contents, and then phoning police.Steiner says that immediately after making the discovery, criticisms of their performance by their superiors began pouring in. He tells KHQ: “For the first two days, basically all we did was get chewed out. We did this wrong. We did that wrong. I don’t know what you consider calling 911 wrong after two minutes after we found it.”As for accusations of “messing around” with the bomb?”We’d go out, and we’d clean up parking lots,” he said. “Who knows what happens when you see a backpack sitting there? The first reaction is to pick it up and that’s what we did, and we opened it, saw wires sticking out of it, and called police.” Thanks for the disaster aversion, guys. Here’s an unemployment check!Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.