WESTFIELD – City and state emergency response personnel scrambled Saturday morning after a container marked “Bio-Hazard, lead foil inside” was found, apparently abandoned, at a Springfield Road storage facility.
City police report that a caller from the U-Haul rental and storage center at 50 Springfield Road reported the discovery in a 10:26 a.m. call Saturday.
Deputy Fire Chief Eric Bishop, Officer William Ullrich and State Trooper Michael Rogowski of the Massachusetts Fire Marshall’s officer were the first to respond.
Ullrich reports that a review of the facility’s security video showed recent activity at one of the storage units. The video shows a person who “pushed the container out of the storage unit with his foot and pushed it around the corner at the end of the building.”
Due to the lead foil referenced in the tag on the container, Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection personnel who were consulted dispatched officers to measure the container for radioactivity and it was not opened, Bishop reports, until the DEP advised that the container was no longer a public safety issue.
Rogowski opened the container and told Ullrich that it contained what could be lead plates used in medical or dental x-ray procedures but stressed that his initial observation was not conclusive.
The video evidence was made available to Rogowski, who will continue the investigation, as was the contact information for the city resident who rents the storage unit in which the container had apparently been stored.
