It’s not a real day in Washington unless someone’s evacuated from their office building or workplace because of a suspicious package left somewhere useful. When I worked downtown, it was a box of napkins dropped in the lobby that lead to our presence on the street for over an hour and a half in the middle of winter. Today’s suspicious package comes to us courtesy of the Union Station area, where the crowds were out on the streets near North Capitol, milling about as the package was ultimately revealed to be harmless.
It’s funny, now when I see a building blocked off and evacuated, I make the immediate assumption that nothing’s really wrong, but that someone dropped their box of napkins, or left their fedex box in the elevator by accident, or sent some a box of vibrators and forgot to remove the batteries.
The hyperbole surrounding this city’s proclivity to immediate high defense is wearing thin on me, and each and every evacuation “just to be safe” is proving to be something more and more banal and less likely to be a real terrorist attack and just a minor inconvenience peculiar to DC.
This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs
I live and work in the District of Columbia. I write at We Love DC, a blog I helped start, I work at Technolutionary, a company I helped start, and I’m happy doing both. I enjoy watching baseball, cooking, and gardening. I grow a mean pepper, keep a clean scorebook, and wash the dishes when I’m done. Read Why I Love DC.
