Exclusive: White Powder Found On Bus In Kippax
October 17th, 2005 at 07:18pm
samuelgordonstewart.com Exclusive:
On Friday afternoon a bus in Kippax was sealed off for two and a half hours after a suspicious substance was found spread all over the back seat. The driver of the bus, after finding the substance, contacted ACTION who advised him to close the bus and wait for help to arrive. According to reports from my sources, the “help” consisted of 1 ACTION supervisor, 2 police cars, 2 fire engines, 1 hazmat van, 1 hazchem clean up van, 2 paramedics and a police media car. It is estimated that roughly 30 people were in attendance…but what did they do? Not much, in fact, in the two and a half hours that they were there, not one person went near the mystery substance, but they did eventually decide that it wasn’t a threat and left. The driver was told to take the bus back to the depot, where it was discovered that the substance was a make-up powder.
Not only did nobody attempt to determine what the substance was in Kippax, they also left the bus driver standing around in the roped off area for fear of contamination, but never attempted to de-contaminate him. This is surely one of the strangest ways to deal with a potential chemical threat, and appears to show a lack of proper procedure for handling such matters.
Samuel
Entry Filed under: Blog News
3 Comments
1. John B1_B5 | October 17th, 2005 at 8:00 pm
I doubt whether that driver will ever report any ‘suspcicious’ looking powder again !
2. John B1_B5 | October 17th, 2005 at 8:02 pm
That should be ‘suspicious’ ( the above was a typo ) .
3. Samuel | October 17th, 2005 at 8:29 pm
Good to hear from you again, John B1_B5, I was starting to think you had disappeared…or maybe I just wasn’t posting items of interest, probably the latter…
The driver reportedly spotted some sparkly bits in the powder at the depot, so I suppose he will shine a torch on the next powder first.
But yes, after the response, it does make you wonder what the point of reporting the powder was in the first place.