A “miscommunication” at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard was to blame for a brief lockdown at the base Monday morning.
Terri Davis, a spokesperson for the Navy’s public shipyard in Portsmouth, Virginia, said the lockdown lasted only a couple of minutes.
The miscommunication resulted when a contractor received an electrical shock while working on the aircraft carrier George H. W. Bush but that was interpreted as “shot," the shipyard said in a news release Monday afternoon.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we did what was right,” Davis added.
The employee was in stable condition and taken to a local hospital.
The shipyard took to its official Facebook page on Monday morning to warn workers there was an active shooter, urging them to “RUN, HIDE, FIGHT” and noting that it was “NOT A DRILL."
Naval bases around the country are currently participating in the annual Citadel Shield-Solid Curtain anti-terrorism force protection exercise. The shipyard was not participating in any drills Monday, Davis said.
The Facebook post, which was captured by The Virginian-Pilot, was removed Monday.
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The lockdown comes amid heightened awareness following high-profile incidents late last year in which a sailor gunned down two others at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard.
Days later, a member of the Royal Saudi Air Force who was training at Naval Air Station Pensacola killed three American sailors and wounded several others in a bloody rampage.
Al-Qaida in Yemen later claimed responsibility for the Dec. 6 attack.
A gate runner at Naval Station Great Lakes in January also triggered a lockdown in mid-January when a base employee failed to follow the commands of a sentry. The vehicle was later found parked on base.
In another incident from Nov. 30, Virginia prosecutors say a gate runner entered Fort Story at 81 miles per hour before crashing his pickup truck into a police cruiser driven by Master-at-Arms 3rd Class Oscar Temores, who died at a nearby hospital.
Nathaniel Lee Campbell, 39, has been charged with involuntary homicide.
Courtney Mabeus-Brown is the senior reporter at Air Force Times. She is an award-winning journalist who previously covered the military for Navy Times and The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where she first set foot on an aircraft carrier. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Foreign Policy and more.
