Rotorua Lakes Council locked down after suspicious mail received

Rotorua Lakes Council’s main building was locked down today after mail addressed to the mayor was opened and found to contain a white powder.

A staff member in the council’s call centre opened the item about 8am and on seeing the white powder in the envelope, immediately contained it and called emergency services.

A Fire Service team and police responded quickly and the building was closed to the public. The customer centre will remain closed until tomorrow.

The office area where the call centre is located, and an adjacent area, were evacuated and quarantined and nine call centre staff underwent decontamination.

“We have no idea where the item came from or who sent it – we can’t speculate on that,” Rotorua Lakes Council Chief Executive Geoff Williams said.

“It was removed from the building by Fire Service staff who will hand it over to the police for testing.

“We are told that given nobody who was in close contact with the mail item had shown any symptoms, it’s unlikely this was a toxic substance, so we are not overly concerned. Having said that, we are nonetheless treating this very seriously and as though it were the real thing,” Mr Williams said.

“Our call centre staff are fine but it was obviously a traumatic event for them and we’ll be providing them with any support they may need. We’ve sent them home for the day but will follow up with them.”

The call centre would remain closed, possibly until Monday, he said. Calls to council would be answered by the after-hours service.

“All staff have acted appropriately and dealt with this very well and we will be getting in specialist cleaning teams to decontaminate the part of the building affected and clean out the air conditioning systems, which we shut down to prevent any circulation of air.”

Mr Williams said he was unaware of any similar previous incidents at Council.

Mayor Steve Chadwick said she experienced a similar incident while she was still in Parliament, during the time she was progressing New Zealand’s smokefree legislation and when she also received death threats.

“I feel very reassured by the immediate response taken by council staff, police and the Fire Service and very comfortable that all the right things are being done,” she said.

The incident was “out of the blue”, the first time such a thing had happened since she became Mayor.

“This is sometimes what goes with leadership,” the Mayor said.

“It’s very sad really that there are people who feel so strongly about something they would do this. There are other ways for people to express themselves.”

ENDS

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