The Stained Parcel: Suspicious Item, Blocked Exit and a Sick Colleague
At 11:20 in the parcel and sorting hall of a head office, 25 staff are on duty. A clerk lifting a brown-paper parcel notices an oily stain spreading on the wrapper, a sharp chemical smell, and a short piece of wire protruding from one corner; the sender's address is illegible. The nearest exit corridor is partly blocked by stacked empty mail bags. A colleague working two tables away says she feels dizzy and nauseated. A supervisor is on another floor, the office has one first-aid box, and the public enquiry counter is 30 metres away with six customers at it. There is no fire-alarm pull station in the hall; the telephone is on the supervisor's desk.
1. Give the immediate actions for the first two minutes, in sequence, and explain why each step comes in that order.
Read the worked answer
The sequence protects people first, evidence second, property third.
- Stop handling. The clerk puts the parcel down on the table, does not open it, shake it, sniff it or cut the wire, and moves away. Two metres of handling is how a suspicious item becomes an incident.
- Clear the immediate area - no one within several tables of it, no bags stacked against it.
- Evacuate the hall through the nearest usable exit. The corridor with empty bags is a trip and fire hazard; use the other route, keep people moving, and assemble away from the building and upwind of the doors.
- Roll call against the duty list so no one re-enters to look for a colleague.
- Call from the supervisor's desk telephone, not from beside the parcel. Mobile and radio transmissions are avoided near a suspected explosive device.
- Attend to the dizzy colleague: fresh air, seated, no food or drink, call for medical help, note the time symptoms began and whether others are affected.
The parcel is not touched again until competent authority arrives, and no one re-enters until clearance is given.
2. Who is informed, and what records must be created while the incident is still live?
Read the worked answer
Notifications go outwards on a fixed list, not in random order.
- Emergency services/police control room first, with a factual description: location, appearance, smell, wire, number of staff evacuated.
- Supervisor and sub-postmaster/postmaster, then the divisional security officer; fire service or ambulance as the medical situation requires.
- Public enquiry counter: staff there are told to hold customers back and, if necessary, close the counter and move people away from the building line - six customers at 30 metres is a crowd that must be managed, not ignored.
Records made during the incident, not afterwards: time of discovery, exact description of the item and its position, who handled it and for how long, actions taken with times, names of staff present, the roll-call result, the time each authority was called, and the name of the officer who took charge. Preserve the CCTV footage and do not clean the table or the floor. Hand the item over to the police against a written acknowledgement and keep a copy. Also record, separately, that the exit corridor was obstructed - an incident report that omits a contributing hazard will not prevent the next one.
3. What happens after the item is declared safe? Set out the debrief, the corrective actions and the reporting obligations.
Read the worked answer
Resumption is authorised, not assumed: obtain written clearance from the police or bomb disposal team before staff re-enter or the counter reopens, then check the hall for anything disturbed during the evacuation.
People: debrief the staff who evacuated and the colleague who felt unwell; find out whether the symptoms were caused by the parcel or by something else in the hall, and record the medical outcome. Staff who handled the item should be told what it turned out to be - silence breeds rumour.
Corrective actions: clear and mark the exit corridor and make it a daily check item; ask why there is no alarm pull station in the hall and raise it in writing; check the first-aid box contents and its accessibility; test whether the phone is reachable without crossing the hazard zone; run a short drill on suspicious-article recognition and the evacuation route.
Reporting: submit the incident report to the divisional office within the prescribed time, with the police acknowledgement, the timeline, the roll call and the corrective actions proposed. If the item proves to be a prohibited or dangerous article, support the investigation with the packaging, the article number and the booking details - the sender's identity is in your records even if it was missing from the wrapper.