After a five-day search for evidence, police and emergency crews have left the area of Grand Desert, N.S.
Hazmat teams, bomb experts and investigators have spent the last week searching through a small cottage and shed containing vast amounts of hazardous chemicals.
RCMP St. Sgt. Scott Warnicka says the area is now safe for residents to return home.
“[Officials] have all the chemicals out of both parts of the property,” he says. “They are being analyzed right now.”
Warnicka says the process of examining the chemicals on site is painstaking. Experts must first determine a chemical’s composition - whether it is an acid, base or solvent.
He says he and many people on these teams agree they’ve never worked a scene quite like this one.
“You can’t mix these types of chemicals and where we have so many with no labels on them, the analyzing is taking us a lot longer that we thought.”
The investigation began on Monday after a suspicious package was found at a Cole Harbour home.
The small, Lawrencetown-area community of Grand Desert became the focus of the investigation on Tuesday night. Three families on Dyke Road were evacuated. They were allowed to return to their homes shortly after 5 p.m. on Saturday.
“Nobody has attended a scene as complex as this,” says Warnicka. “With this many chemicals, and this many unknown agents.”
Christopher Phillips, 42, made his first court appearance in Dartmouth on Friday. In connection with this case, he is charged with one count of uttering threats and one count of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose.
