Facebook evacuated amid fears of possible nerve agent in a package

Facebook’s Menlo Park mailing facility in California has been evacuated amid fears a package received may contain a potentially deadly nerve agent.

A machine at the campus has detected what is believed to be sarin in the package which was received at 11am local time.

The FBI and the California Army National Guard Civil Support Team have been called to the site to investigate.

Harold Schapelhouman, Menlo Park Fire Protection District Fire Chief, said they still don’t know whether the package contains a nerve agent.

“They ran it through three different processes and two of those identified that there could be sarin involved with the package,” he told 3AW’s Tony Jones.

“We’re hopeful that in the next several hours we’ll wind this down and remove the product.”

Human contact with the suspicious package has been minimal.

“This processing facility is mostly automated, so it has a very small staff,” Mr Schapelhouman said.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 people work at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus.

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