--- Steve Polifka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Last week a secretary at > the college where I work > opened up a big envelope with alot of powder in it. > She was taken to the > hospital, and that building was quarantined, along > with several other > employees. Luckily, it was a false alarm. She is > alright and it was not a > toxic substance, although they wouldn't say what it > was.
There were a whole bunch of similar incidents that all happened here on Tuesday, in govt' offices and, if I'm not mistaken, in private business as well. We still don't have the lab results back but I've been nagging the public health guy about it (I hate doing that because I know how busy they are). The ironic thing is that the Public Health Lab that does the testing is part of my ministry - but we still don't know! I even e-mailed the manager over at the lab to ask him it he could check to see if our sample had been tested yet - that was just a bit before I left work. I hate doing that kind of thing because I really can't stand queue-jumping and I figure my staff shouldn't get treated any different than any member of the public with a similar issue. I also know that there were a whole bunch of these things that happened here on Tuesday and the cops and the fire dept were run ragged. I learned after the fact that there is an actual team from public health who are supposed to show up when an incident of this kind happens, to talk to teh people who contacted the stuff and to counsel anyone who's really worried and upset about it. That didn't happen in our office. I have to admit, I'm completely convinced it's all a hoax and, even though I was one of the people who touched the stuff (and I even managed to inhale some of it when I breathed in when another person was moving things around), I'm not really worried - but I have two clerical staff who ARE really worried. One of them comes from Sri Lanka to being with and I'm sure she went through a lot there. She also just lost her mother recently and just isn't in the greatest of health mentally or physically right now. The other one is a young single mother of 4-yr old twin girls and she's not even permanent stafff - she's a temp and doesn't get benefits or anything like the rest of my staff. If I don't get some word tomorrow, I'm going to be really pissed! The other weird thing that happened is that Wednesday morning, after I took my dog for her 6 a.m. walk, Inoticed an open briefcase sitting on my driveway between my car and the garage door. It hadn't been there the night before and I have no idea where it came from! It was open and it was full of tools like screwdrivers and so on. I called the cops who came and took a report and checked to see if it looked as if someone had tried to break into the house (I had already had a look around and there's no sign of any of that.) I've had more dealings with the police in the last week than I've ever had in my life and it's not something I care to do too often! At least the cop who came to my house was really cute - looked kind of like Benjamin Bratt would have looked as a teenager - a really YOUNG cop! Get your free @yahoo.ca address at http://mail.yahoo.ca
