Most Bomb Threats Are Hoaxes — Then Police Searched an Illinois Ethanol Plant and Ordered Everyone Within a Mile to Get Out

Friday the 13th was supposed to be a big night in downtown Peoria. Country star Jon Pardi was booked at the Civic Center. At Dozer Park, the minor-league Peoria Chiefs were switching on 1.5 million holiday lights for opening night.

About a mile away, on the bank of the Illinois River, police had spent the whole afternoon inside a sprawling ethanol plant. The public would not hear why for almost six hours.

At 7:02 p.m., the alert went out across two cities: anyone who lives or works within one mile of BioUrja Renewables should evacuate immediately.

“We were open for probably 45 minutes when the police showed up and said shut it down,” Chiefs general manager Jason Mott told the Peoria Journal Star. “They told us why, and it was stunning.”

Most bomb threats turn out to be nothing. That is exactly what made Friday in Peoria so different — and why, as of Saturday morning, thousands of people still couldn’t go home.

Six Hours Inside the Plant

The call came in at 1:08 p.m. BioUrja, which runs the former ADM ethanol plant at 1 Edmund Street in South Peoria, told police it had received a bomb threat, Police Chief Brad Dixon said.

Officers went in and began searching. Around 2 p.m., they found a suspicious package and called in more help, Dixon said, according to the Journal Star and WCBU. Then came hours of careful work while the rest of the city carried on with its Friday.

At about 6:45 p.m., investigators made their call: the package was a credible threat. They drew a blast radius one mile wide around the plant. Seventeen minutes later, the evacuation alerts went out.

That circle swallowed a startling slice of the region. It took in parts of downtown Peoria, the Warehouse District and the South Side, and reached across the river into East Peoria, including homes and several Caterpillar buildings, WCBU reported. CNN said more than 5,000 residents and workers were evacuated from a city of about 110,000.

The Night Downtown Went Dark

The shutdown moved fast. Interstate 74 was closed in both directions through Peoria. “Please stay away from downtown Peoria and the riverfront area of East Peoria,” Peoria County Sheriff Chris Watkins posted on Facebook, telling drivers to use I-474 to bypass the city.

At the Civic Center, the Jon Pardi show was called off. “At the direction of the Chief of Police, tonight’s concert has been canceled due to an active local safety concern,” the singer wrote on Instagram.

At Dozer Park, about 90 people were walking through the light show when officers arrived. “I would venture to say none of the other teams in the Midwest League have ever had an event cancelled because of a bomb threat,” Mott told the Journal Star. “That’s a new one for us. But we got everyone out of there safely and quickly.”

Businesses closed for the night. Caterpillar told its third-shift workers not to come in, WEEK 25News reported. Across the river, East Peoria Mayor John Kahl posted: “There has been a credible threat and the City is taking this seriously.”

Families who had nowhere to go headed to Manual Academy, a school on South Griswold Street turned into an emergency shelter. Another opened at the EastSide Centre in East Peoria.

“We Know It’s a Bomb”

By then, everyone in the shelter knew there had been a bomb threat. What they didn’t know was whether it was real.

Around 9:12 p.m., bomb technicians rendered the package safe, Dixon later said. But the official word on what it actually was came from Mayor Rita Ali, who addressed reporters at the Manual Academy shelter late Friday. She was the first official to confirm it.

“A device has been identified. We know it’s a credible threat. We know it’s a bomb,” Ali said, according to WEEK 25News. Then she added the part that kept the evacuation in place: “We don’t know if there are other devices.”

At a news conference at 12:40 a.m. Saturday, Dixon made clear this was not one of the usual false alarms.

“When a bomb threat comes in, typically, it’s not legitimate, and they’re doing it to cause an evacuation of a building or something like that,” the chief said, according to ABC News. “This is not the case here. We found a credible package that we deem to be a threat… We’re not considering this a hoax.”

He would not say much more. “I don’t want to get into how many we found, where we found them,” Dixon said, according to NBC News. The device itself was safe, he stressed, but the plant was not. “It’s a large facility. There’s going to be an exhaustive search of the facility. That has not been completed yet.”

His message to anyone still inside the circle was blunt. “Take the blast radius serious,” he said, according to WMBD. “We’re asking you to get out of the blast radius.”

The FBI’s Promise

The FBI joined the investigation, and Gov. JB Pritzker directed Illinois State Police to help, urging residents to “follow directions from law enforcement and stay clear of the area.” Ryan Presley, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Springfield office, gave nothing away about who might be behind it, but he made a promise. “While it is early in the investigation, know this,” Presley said, according to CNN. “We will work tirelessly to identify the individual responsible and bring them to justice.”

As of Saturday morning, no arrests had been announced and no one had been reported hurt. Officials have not said what kind of device it was, how it got there, or who made the threat. Searches were expected to run into Saturday afternoon, and police planned another update around midday.

A Plant That Has Shaken Peoria Before

The address has a long history. Long before it made ethanol, the complex on Edmund Street was the Hiram Walker whiskey distillery — at one time the largest of its kind in the world, according to WCBU. The distillery closed in 1981 and was converted to ethanol production. ADM ran it for years before selling it in 2021 to Houston-based BioUrja Group, which today makes beverage-grade and industrial alcohol there.

It is also not the first time the plant has forced the city to hold its breath. In May 2022, a grain bin exploded there, collapsing silos and sparking a fire that caused more than $2 million in damage, WCBU and Reuters reported. Two workers suffered minor injuries. A federal safety inspector’s report summed up what they saw as the bin gave way and a fireball erupted: “Looked like the sun and then the power went out.”

That night was an accident; officials later blamed a leak in one of the big silos.

This time, police say, it was no hoax. Somewhere out there is the person the FBI has vowed to find — and until the last corner of the old whiskey plant has been searched, Peoria is still waiting to learn whether they left anything else behind.