Firefighters and investigators last night examine the contents of a car that was exuding an ammonia-like smell behind Dartmouth’s main dining hall. All photos © Eric Francis.
HANOVER - First responders, including New Hampshire’s State Police Bomb Squad, spent eight hours Sunday investigating what the fire chief described as a “weird” incident involving a car parked behind Dartmouth College’s main student dining hall.
Shortly after 11 a.m. witnesses reported seeing a woman pouring a caustic-smelling liquid into a black car with Wisconsin license plates in the small parking lot that sits directly behind The Class of 1953 Commons and the neighboring Theta Delta Chi fraternity house.
Hanover Fire Chief Michael Gilbert said when firefighters arrived they found liquid coming out of the car “with kind of an ammonia type smell” and noticed several handwritten signs taped to the outside of the car which had something of a conspiratorial bent to them.
“The fact that there are signs on the car makes it different and odd,” said Hanover Fire Chief Michael Gilbert.
The chief said police and firefighters made contact with the woman who had poured the liquid around and discovered that she was a temporary employee working at Dartmouth and that it was her car but they were not able to clear up what she had been doing in the parking lot and why.
“There were just too many unknowns,” the chief said, adding “It’s weird. The fact that there are signs on the car makes it different and odd and that makes us concerned about her mental health.”
After speaking to the woman authorities decided to have her transported to the Dartmouth Health medical center to have her undergo an evaluation while police continued their investigation to see if any laws had been broken.
The locked car appeared to be stuffed with belongings including several large plastic containers so, with concerns lingering that there might be some sort of noxious chemistry or even the potential for explosive devices, the decision was made to request the state’s bomb squad respond to the scene before opening the vehicle.
Hanover Police and Fire crews sat on the scene doing air tests and setting up monitoring equipment while they waited for a judge to approve a search warrant to enter the vehicle and for members of the bomb squad to arrive and set up, which they did just as dusk was falling.
Police and bomb squad investigators worked on the car from 11 am until after dark.
Using a disrupter round, which fires a concentrated blast of water accompanied by an intensely loud bang, the bomb squad blasted through the side windows of the car shortly after 6 p.m. Firefighters wearing self-contained breathing gear then metered the air inside the car and cut open the trunk with hydraulic tools before giving the all clear to begin searching through piles of belongings and suitcases inside the vehicle.
“The Bomb Squad cleared the vehicle and determined there were no explosives and then the Hazmat Team went in with their meters and had some readings for ammonia and bleach, which we expected to find, but nothing more was found beyond that,” Chief Gilbert noted.
Members of the Hartford Fire Department, the Upper Valley Midwestern Hazmat Team, and Dartmouth College’s Environmental Health & Safety team and Dartmouth Safety and Security also assisted.