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DUANE BOURNEPostal workers call in a hazardous materials team after they discover an unidentified powder is leaking from an oddly labeled package. It turns out the powder is just gravy mix.
BROOKSVILLE - Hernando County's main post office branch was evacuated and a hazardous materials team called in after a worker found a suspicious package leaking a powder.
It turns out that the mystery package was nothing more than an early Thanksgiving gift: turkey gravy mix.
"This makes a great Thanksgiving story, huh?" said Hernando's community relations coordinator Brenda Frazier. "I just hope that the people he sent it to have an alternate plan for their Thanksgiving gravy."
The scare occurred sometime between 7 and 7:30 a.m. as a postal worker pushed a bin into the facility's processing area, at 19101 State Road 50. There were 25 workers in the post office at the time, Frazier said.
After lifting the 12-by-12 inch box, the employee noticed a powder spilling from the package. He placed the box on the floor, and while others looked on, began emergency protocol for handling strange packages. He then called 911.
When the Brooksville Police Department arrived, the box was secured, while the residue was left on the post office floor to be examined by the county's hazmat team. The post office was closed temporarily.
The two employees that came in direct contact with the box were decontaminated as a precaution, Frazier said. No injuries were reported.
Brooksville police were treating the incident as a criminal case until around 11:30 a.m., when the unidentified sender confirmed that he had sent a package containing turkey gravy mix, which dissolves in water. The building was reopened to the public shortly afterward.
The package had been at the main post office for a day, but it raised more concerns when officials realized that the seemingly innocuous box had an altered label.
According to Frazier, the package was addressed to an undisclosed location in the North. However, there was another label redirecting the package to an address in Hernando County. She said the return address consisted only of numbers, which added to the mystery.
Officials later called the northern address, but learned that the telephone was disconnected.
After several attempts, they eventually reached the package's intended recipient, who lives locally but said he was not expecting a package.
Wednesday's scare was not the area's first in the post-anthrax era. In March 2003, a female staffer sorting the mail at Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite's Brooksville office noticed a putrid odor emanating from a box that was with a manila envelope containing hate mail.
The return address was Germany. But after sheriff's forensic investigators X-rayed the box, they discovered it was harmless. It contained bones.
The type of bone was never disclosed, but it was later discovered that the package was sent as a prank by a German magazine to protest Brown-Waite's legislation to exhume bodies from American cemeteries in France and Belgium.
The legislation has not moved since it was referred to the House Subcommittee on Benefits last March.
- Duane Bourne can be reached at 352 754-6114 or dbourne@sptimes.com