Dallas VA Patients Return For Appointments After Bomb Scare

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DALLAS (CBS11) - The Dallas VA Medical Center is trying to quickly accommodate hundreds of patients who had their appointments cancelled during a bomb scare Monday.

The facility is squeezing the affected veterans into the first available doctors visits after they had to be evacuated.

Authorities say the suspicious device found in a radiology service office, was an oxygen tank with wires coming out of it and into a box.

Melvin Allen, who was in the army eight years during the Vietnam War, says he was sitting in the lab and heard it wasn't a drill.

"It was time for me to get up and get out," said Allen.

Allen said he made the trip back on train Tuesday without knowing if he'd be seen.

"To see if they re-schedule my appointment or perhaps see me today," he said.

He said no one at the VA called him to reschedule.

Another veteran, Glenn Galiga, had a appointment previously scheduled for Tuesday, and had a minor delay. "We were about 15 minutes late getting to the doctor."

He and his wife said other patients told them the VA medical center seemed more crowded than normal.

Becky Galiga said, "She dropped her father off at the door and went to find a parking place as she normally does. She said she found a spot back at the maintenance section way, way of."

A VA spokesman said the facility's police department is investigating employees in the same office where authorities found the suspicious device.