tending toward agreement.
hope things get squared away before we head to shanksville wednesday morning ...
Posted on 09/09/2002 5:52:37 PM PDT by itsnevertoolate
A suspicious cooler left near the Somerset County crash site of Flight 93 Sunday night has sent state police and federal investigators into a spin.
What made the cooler questionable, police said, were the several containers inside labeled "Three Mile Island," as well as a radiation detection card that had apparently been stolen from the nuclear power plant's visitors' center.
Whether it is a bad practical joke or something sinister, officials don't know yet.
But with the president's visit just days away, police are not taking any chances, and certainly are not taking the incident lightly.
As of late this morning, state police, along with members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, were in the process of analyzing the clear liquid inside a jug, along with the contents of two smaller metal containers - all of which were labeled with the nuclear power plant's name.
The incident began around 9 p.m. Sunday, according to Jack Lewis, state police spokesman, when a woman called the Somerset County Sheriff's Department to report an item that "appeared out of place" at the makeshift memorial for those who died in the airplane crash one year ago on Wednesday.
State police responded along with members of the local sheriff's department, Lewis said, and found inside the cooler, "a clear jug with a clear liquid," as well as two metal containers - all with the words "Three Mile Island" written on them.
The cooler had been duct-taped shut, officials noted, but otherwise had not markings or anything usual on the outside. Somerset County's Hazardous Materials team was called to check the cooler for any radiation that might be emanating from the items or the area, Lewis said, and none was found.
FBI agents were also called to the scene, the police spokesman said, and after the cooler was properly packaged and removed from the site, experts will be analyzing the contents of the containers today.
Ralph DeSantis, spokesman for Exelon Nuclear, the corporation which owns the TMI plant, said they were notified by state police around 12:40 a.m. today.
Three employees immediately drove to the western Pennsylvania site to help in the investigation, DeSantis said.
The card inside the cooler - technically called a thermoluminescent dosimeter - had an identification number on it, DeSantis noted, which they were able to track to the nuclear plant's visitors' center in Middletown.
DeSantis said they discovered the dosimeter, which is about the size of a baseball card and detects radiation exposure, had been stolen from a display outside the center.
Exactly when the item was stolen from the center across the Susquehanna River from the nuclear plant was not available this morning.
The labels on the three containers, DeSantis said, were not official TMI or Exelon Nuclear labels.
The metal containers were described by DeSantis as environmental monitoring equipment.
Ron Ruman, spokesman for the Department of Environmental Resources, which was also notified about the incident, said the metail containers appeared to be from the contents of a home radon detection kit.</P.
Police near Shanksville said this morning they were flooded with media inquiries about the suspicious incident, made obvious as investigators cordoned off the area near the memorial as a crime scene.
Somerset County is already crowded with visitors and media from across the country in anticipation of the first anniversary of the terrrorists' attack, on Wednesday, which will include a visit by President Bush.
Thanks, kayak!
Does it ever. I was just about to log off. This is definitely not the last story of the day you want on your mind. Sometimes I think it's better to be in the uninformed sheeple category.
Race- for your files...
Thanks for posting this.
tending toward agreement.
hope things get squared away before we head to shanksville wednesday morning ...
I was beginning to wonder what was up, that no one was reporting this story... I had even checked A/P this afternoon to see if the story was there....
You were really on that boat? You never cease to amaze...
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