Mercury spill closes Mail Center One

At about 4:30 p.m. Monday, Jan. 18, the Belleville Fire Department was dispatched to a Hazmat situation at Mail Center One in the Belle Plaza shopping center, 847 Sumpter Road, where a package was leaking mercury.
The store was closed off, with a Belleville fire engine parked sideways in front of it and a crew standing by to keep people away, until late in the evening waiting for the owners of the store to get a professional cleaning company to clean up the mercury.
Fire Chief Brian Loranger said around noon on Tuesday that at that point the owners of the business had not yet called in a company to clean up the mercury and so the city condemned the unit, pulling its certificate of occupancy, until it is cleaned.
Chief Loranger said the door has been chained shut and nobody allowed inside until the mercury is removed.
When asked if there was a lot of mercury, Chief Loranger said any amount is too much and he believes it was at least a Tablespoon of mercury that dripped out.
He said someone dropped off this package to ship it and when Fed Ex got there they said, “No way,” and it all began.
Apparently something inside the package had broken, he said.
Chief Loranger said the mercury is in several different spots in the shop. He said it is expensive to clean up, but either the owner of the business or the owner of the building will have to clean it up properly.