ST. ALBANS, Vt. -
Emergency teams responded to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Thursday morning when employees in the mailroom thought an envelope emitting a weird smell and spilling a strange substance was worth worrying about. Mailroom employees were evacuated but returned to work a few hours later when the suspicion of something dangerous turned out to be nothing more than something very odd.
It was powder residue from dead insects," USCIS public affairs officer Anita Rios Moore said.
"Quite a number of them."
There's been quite of number of evacuations this year already. In February Senator Patrick Leahy's Burlington office was evacuated when a letter with similar traits to suspicious letters sent to other politicians arrived. Last month the coast guard shutdown when a man dropped off an odd looking box that ended up holding an old coast guard film. Earlier this year the USCIS facility evacuated because an electronic greeting card looked ominous when under an x-ray machine.
"Fortunately in both cases it turned out to be a package that was not hazardous," Moore said.
"There are some types of things that would cause me more alarm than this," St. Albans police chief Gary Taylor said.
Taylor says there is a protocol to follow. The facility under alert calls local police to head the investigation and if necessary police call other departments with additional resources like the state police.
"Early on try and figure out what we're dealing with and if we can't we take the precautions that are necessary," Vermont State Police Luitenant. Tom Hango said.
That can mean contacting FBI, Homeland Security or bringing out the bomb squad...the last of which costs Vermont money.
"There are costs associated with calling some members of that team that might not be assigned to that particular shift at the time the call comes in," Hango said.
This time Taylor only called out the state's Hazardous Material Unit and the state police did not get involved with the investigation.
For law enforcement being safe rather than sorry is more than the price of postage.
