Monday saw a flurry of emergency hazmat crews taking over a Facebook mailing facility in Menlo Park, California after a machine alerted the employees a package might contain a chemical nerve agent known as sarin.
Sarin is a clear, colorless and tasteless liquid that has absolutely no odor when presented in pure form. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines sarin as “a human-made chemical warfare agent classified as a nerve agent.”
The agent was first developed in 1938 in Germany and was used as a pesticide. It is considered 26 times deadlier than cyanide and has been used in two terrorist attacks in Japan in 1994 and 1995, by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult.
It can evaporate into gas and spread easily into the environment if fired off and, while there are antidotes for it, they must be administered within minutes in order for them to be effective.
With all that in mind, a hazmat team entered the building around 6 p.m and tested the package. They exited around 45 minutes later and went through the decontamination process.
Subsequently, the hazmat teams did another sweep of the building with more “sophisticated detection equipment”, according to a a fire district press release and placed the package in a mobile containment device, removing it from the premises.
No employees were exposed to the substance, four buildings were immediately evacuated following the report but three of them were cleared for repopulation after the hazmat teams deemed them to be safe.
Facebook swiftly released a statement that was short and concise and din’t offer a lot of information on the situation but the company stated that the safety of its employees “is our top priority and we will share additional information when it is available.”
For the time being, the specialists are still testing the package but the alleged attack has increased the concerns of tech companies over security.
Facebook, thankfully, runs all of its mail and packages through a machine that can detect dangerous substances but the dangers come in many forms – in 2018, a woman shot three people at the YouTube headquarters because of how YouTube had handled her videos.
Also last year in December, Facebook was the target of a bomb threat at its headquarters, a threat which saw the entire building getting evacuated. It proved to be a false alarm in the end.
At the time this article is being written the FBI is still investigating the incident.
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