City hall was evacuated early Thursday afternoon after it was confirmed carfentanil was in a package of drugs found a day earlier.
City spokesperson Julia Harvie-Shemko said the drugs were found in one of the ground-floor public washrooms Wednesday afternoon.
The baggie contained a substance that appeared similar to cocaine. A city staffer took the baggie to the RCMP where the drugs were tested.
Initially, the city said fentanyl was detected. However, the city corrected that early on Friday, saying the drug was carfentanil, which is 100 times more toxic than fentanyl.
A synthetic opioid, carfentanil is 10,000 times more toxic than morphine. Carfentanil looks much like table salt and a dose as small as 20 micrograms can be fatal to humans.
In this case, the staffer, who took the drugs to the police, or anyone else, did not suffer any ill effects.
Harvie-Shemko said she did not know exactly how much of the drug had been found.
However, given the lethal reputation of carfentanil, city hall was closed as a precautionary measure and about 200 staff were evacuated around 1 p.m.
“We know that (carfentanil) has such an impact on people and it can be airborne. That’s why we’ve taken the precautions.”
There is the possibility that some of the drug got outside the bag. “Because a member of the public brought it in, we don’t know what the travel patterns were and those kinds of things. We just wanted to be cautious and make sure we were cleaning the building as appropriate.”
Red Deer Emergency Services’ Hazardous Materials Response Unit arrived on scene about 2 p.m. One member was seen carrying a hand-held detector.
Harvie-Shemko said the experience has city hall looking at how to respond in the future.
“This is a new thing to us. It’s not something we’ve encountered in Red Deer at city hall or any city organization.”
“I think we always learn from these situations. We’ve already identified today some areas where we can change some processes.”
Harvie-Shemko said in the future if drugs are encountered staff will call 911 immediately rather than handle the package in any way.
City spokesperson Tara Shand said on Friday afternoon no changes are planned with the public washrooms but they plan to ensure staff know how to handle these types of situations.
“We’ll contnue to evaluate our processes and make sure we have really clear procedures in place so everybody knows exactly what to do if this were to happen all over again.”
pcowley@reddeeradvocate.com
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