Scott Air Force Base: “Normal Suspicious Package” Sends Three People to Hospital
August 31st, 2011Via: Washington Post:
Three people from Scott Air Force Base in southwestern Illinois were hospitalized with rashes Wednesday and parts of the facility were evacuated after a suspicious package arrived at the base’s mail center.
Capt. Kathleen Ferrero said 14 people were decontaminated on site and the three others were treated at a hospital in Belleville, Ill., then released. All were near the area of the base’s mail center and may have been exposed, she said.
Air Force Lt. Benjamin Garland said the hospitalized people showed no symptoms other than the rashes.
Ferrero said she did not know what the package contained and would not address media reports that it smelled like sulphur.
With the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks less than two weeks away, Scott spokesman Thomas Kistler said no extra precautions were in place on the base. He said officials are not treating this as a potential terrorist incident.
“I think they’re treating it as a normal suspicious package right now,” he said.
The package discovered Wednesday morning prompted precautionary evacuations of the base’s education center, bowling alley and other services near the mail center. Kistler said officials were confident there was no reason for anyone else to leave.
“We have evacuated an area around the package but we haven’t enlarged the evacuation area,” he said. “We don’t anticipate there’s any danger to the rest of the base or to the community as a whole.”
