Bomb alert causes chaos in Antwerp and Limburg

It was around 3AM that the Antwerp sorting office was evacuated following a bomb alert. Police closed the entire street and halted all train traffic in the vicinity. Two hundred employees were obliged to leave their posts and little mail got sorted as a result. Employees were allowed to go home, but many were stranded because their vehicles were on the car park inside the grounds of the sorting office. They had to wait for the all-clear before they could collect their vehicles.

Police performed a “sweep” of the sorting office and around 5:20AM sounded the all-clear.

The post office’s Barbara Van Speybroeck explains that the alert came at a particularly unhelpful time for postal services: “The bomb alert occurred at the worst time as far as our activities are concerned. As everybody had to leave, work could not proceed. As a result virtually no mail was able to leave for the provinces of Antwerp and Limburg.”

Flandersnews.be / Expatica