BANGOR – More tests will be done, but authorities said Wednesday that two suspicious items that had the appearance of pipe bombs found Tuesday in a snowbank likely were not explosive devices.

“At this point, it looks like something that was nonexplosive,” Bangor Detective Sgt. Paul Kenison said Wednesday.

One day earlier, a pedestrian found what appeared to be a flashlight in a snowbank up from the intersection of busy Hammond and Union streets. Authorities blocked off Union Street from Hammond Street to West Broadway for several hours and evacuated several buildings.

Members of the department’s Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team used equipment and from a distance broke open one device. A short time later the team found what appeared to be a second device and rendered it safe in a similar manner.

Sections of the items have been examined, and they were expected Wednesday night to be taken to Bangor International Airport where Transportation Safety Administration officials were to test them for the presence of explosives residue, said Kenison, a member of the EOD team.

The two objects at first appeared to be flashlights, and the man who found one device described it as such, saying that he saw it in the snowbank and kicked it, to loosen it from the snow.

After further review, Kenison said investigators are pretty sure the devices were not flashlights, but more like the cylindrical metal batons used in martial arts training. He said they appeared to be broken and discarded and that part of the martial arts weapons made it look like there was a fuse there.

Kenison said he couldn’t go into specifics about how they handled Tuesday’s devices or even other situations, out of concern that someone could use that information and build a device that would circumvent any efforts they could take to render the device safe.

He said, however, the EOD team has equipment available to deal with a variety of situations, including a robot that can transport a potentially dangerous object to where the team can manage it.

Kenison said the EOD team responds to about a dozen calls a year, although sometimes it’s several months between calls. Other times they have been called twice in the same day. Some calls involve packages sent to homes or discovered at the post office that have no return address or that appear suspicious, he said.

As in what happened Tuesday, sometimes the team is called in to deal with something that has the appearance of a bomb. On two occasions in 1996, devices designed to look like bombs were placed in a Thirteenth Street home in Bangor. As part of the investigation, several homes were evacuated as well as a portion of the Fairmount Elementary School.

Two people were convicted in connection with that hoax, and at least some of the restitution they were ordered to pay went toward providing training for members of the team.

Working on what is commonly called the bomb squad requires specialized equipment and training, Kenison said. He and Lt. Mark Hathaway have served on the team the longest, since 1996.

All members are required to attend a five-week course in Alabama, a joint effort between the U.S. Army and the FBI. Every three years, members are required to be recertified, while each month they attend 10 hours of in-house training and are required to complete 40 hours of outside training.

Although it now appears that what was discovered was not an explosive, Kenison said authorities didn’t know that at the time and took precautions, including blocking off the road. While it was an inconvenience for some motorists, it nonetheless was a necessity, the officer said.

“They didn’t know what it was, but our goal was to make it safe,” he said.