Yesterday as I was leaving the office, I noticed a fire engine arrive and block off the street to the building next to ours. I didn’t stop to find out what was going on. This morning, however, I found out that it was because employees in a mailroom in that building had found a mysterious white powder in a package.
Apparently one of the employees felt sick, and three employees who had been exposed were taken to the hospital. The area was quaratined, and various emergency services in Orem got to test their procedures for dealing with a possible biological terrorist attack.
Fortunately, the white powder turned out to be neither anthrax nor ricin, and the employees are fine.
Now, here’s the kicker: The package was misdelivered; it was not intended for the building next door, it was intended for my building. For my office. In fact, it was addressed to me — which is why I had messages from the FBI in my voicemail this morning, asking me to call as soon as possible. I called, and the agent wanted to know whether had ordered a Buffy the Vampire Slayer book, and what I knew about the seller. I told him I’d ordered the book through Amazon.com’s marketplace, and other than that I knew nothing about the seller.
So, apparently all this fuss was the result of a misdelivered package. Still, it’s good to know that the FBI and Orem officials are prepared to deal with a threat of this type, should it ever actually happen.
However, I do wonder what I would have done had I opened the package, which I expected, and noticed some sort of white powder. Would I have ignored it, or would I have considered the possibility that it was anthrax? Frankly, at this point I don’t know how I would have reacted.
At least the FBI agent is going to check into how I can get my book back from the CDC.
UPDATE: Changed the link in the first paragraph to a Deseret News story with more information.
UPDATE #2: According to this story, the white powder turned out to be “grounded up packing material.”
UPDATE #3: A wrap-up story from the Deseret News.