AUBURN – Mail was backed up in the Twin Cities Monday after U.S. Postal employees reported a suspicious substance at the Rodman Road facility.
At about 3:15 a.m., a white, powdery substance was discovered on a mail sorting machinery while nearly a dozen postal employees were at work inside the building.
Postal supervisors quickly moved forward with protocol put in place since a series of anthrax scares following terrorist attacks in September 2001.
“They isolated the eleven employees that were there and they called the appropriate authorities,” said U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Christine Dugas.
Auburn firefighters responded to the Rodman Road building. Clean Harbors, an environmental cleanup group out of Portland, was called to clean up mail sorting equipment and to take the suspicious substance to the state laboratory in Augusta.
There was no word late Monday on what the substance proved to be. No injuries or ailments were reported at the post office on Rodman Road.
By 1 p.m., the facility was open for business, Dugas said. Mail that piled up while the situation was being investigated was being delivered later in the day.
“Our carriers are out there getting the mail delivered,” Dugas said. “You might see it coming in a little later than usual, but they will be out delivering until dark.”
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