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A research centre at the St. Boniface Hospital was evacuated Friday as the Winnipeg Police Bomb Unit helped remove a ‘volatile substance.’
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Winnipeg Police confirmed its Bomb Unit was at the St. Boniface Hospital Albrechtsen Research Centre. The evacuation order was later extended to the Dr. Andrei Sakharov MRI Centre with MRI services suspended for much of the day.
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Both buildings were later safely re-opened. MRI services were resumed for urgent patients Friday evening, the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority said in an email to hospital staff. Regular out-patient appointments for MRIs will resume Saturday.
During a routine laboratory decommissioning in the Albrechtsen Research Centre, a container was found that required further investigation during an inventory of chemical products found within that lab.
“This product has a legitimate research usage and was onsite for the purposes of that legitimate usage,” said the WRHA in its email. “It appears upon initial investigation that the product may have been in the lab for some time and had degraded over time into a form that is considered highly volatile.
“Once that determination had been made, the evacuations were called out of an abundance of caution.”
“Building occupants were evacuated as a precaution during the controlled material extraction,” said police spokesperson Const. Claude Chancy in an email.
“The item has now been removed, and the Bomb Unit will dispose of it appropriately.”
Hospital operations were not affected by the incident, said WRHA in an earlier email to hospital staff.
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