More than 1,200 students and staff at Mission Secondary School were evacuated shortly after 11 a.m. Tuesday after a threatening note describing a bomb threat was located within the building.

The first phone call was to the school district and then instantaneously to the RCMP, said principal Jim Pearce on Wednesday.

"RCMP were here very quickly. It was awesome. We were still trying to make some phone calls and they were here," said Pearce.

The district's first priority was to keep students and staff safe, so the entire school was immediately evacuated shortly before the lunch break. It was the first event of this nature Pearce had witnessed in his 14 years at MSS.

Mission RCMP Sgt. Shaun Wright described the note as a bomb threat.

"Police and [two] dogs conducted a search and failed to locate anything of interest," said Wright. "It basically turned out to be nothing except the empty threat."

RCMP are continuing to investigate and are in the process of tracking down the author of the note, believed to be a student.

"The investigation is ongoing with regards to locating the originator of the threat and it's progressing adequately," said Wright on Wednesday afternoon.

He added that once they find the perpetrator and if charges are forwarded, it's still up to the judge.

"There's a wide range of sanctions that can be applied," said Wright.

After the evacuation on Tuesday, students, who were gathered along the perimeter of the school grounds, were dismissed for the day.

"The amount of people power was significant," said Pearce. "Every RCMP was here, two dog teams, 105 staff and support staff. You really appreciate how important a school is when something like this happens. Information going out on social network was instantaneous; everybody knew something was going on. Social network really plays a role."

He added that he was really proud of his staff to focus on the safety of the students.

Wednesday things were back to normal at MSS, but Pearce went on the intercom for about 10 minutes first thing and addressed the students.

"Kids want to know what's going on. We told them what they needed to know to calm that whole thing down.

"It's business as usual for today. But the bottom line, our students needed to be safe and we pro-vided that really well yesterday."

JKonda-Witte@abbotsfordtimes.com