Daily Herald back open for business; 'suspicious' mail not hazardous

Jim Hanlon, a distribution driver for the Daily Herald, started Wednesday the same way he has most days in his 30 years at the company. A little after 7 a.m., he picked up the mail, went upstairs to the fourth floor mail room and started sorting it.

As he was moving pieces of mail, he noticed a few envelopes that sounded like something was loose inside them. They were all addressed the same way and had no return address.

“Immediately that's suspicious,” Hanlon said. “I shook one of them and it sounded like there were granules of something inside it.” That moment of recognition led to the Daily Herald being evacuated for nearly three hours on Wednesday morning as fire and police officials investigated what was thought to be a hazmat situation, but turned out to be a hoax.

In the end, the seven letters filled with a “suspicious” substance were deemed not dangerous by the Arlington Heights Fire Department and employees were allowed back in the building around noon.

Hanlon spent those hours isolated in an ambulance.

“It's kind of frightening when you're handling something like that and you don't know, is it something that's going to kill me,” he said. “At that point nobody knew what it was.”

Arlington Heights Deputy Fire Chief Pete Ahlman said the contents of the seven envelopes were tested on-site and the contents were found not to be hazardous. They have been bagged and turned over to the U.S. Postal Inspector for further investigation, he said.

The white envelopes, which were addressed to company employees, syndicated columnists who do not work at the Daily Herald and other names that no one recognized, were in a bin that had been picked up at the local post office and brought to the Office Center.

Hanlon said a million thoughts ran through his mind while he was in isolation, but now that the letters were found not to be harmful, he was more angry than relieved.

“I probably won't sleep too well tonight,” he said. “I was more mad than anything else, that people would do stuff like that.”