A commercial building -- the Pacific Business Centre -- at 5811 Cooney Rd. was partially evacuated by Richmond RCMP at about 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon after a suspicious package was delivered to one of the businesses.
"There was an Xpresspost package received by one of the offices. They found a sealed plastic bag inside with some unknown quantity of materials in it," said Richmond RCMP Sgt. Cam Kowalski, who wouldn't release the name of the specific company.
RCMP arrived at the building, occupied by mostly law and financial firms as well as the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, along with their specialised CBRNe (Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear) unit that looked at the package and removed it from the scene.
"We were just following protocol -- there was a concern with recent years of suspicious things found down south that a lot of people have protocols with these types of events," said Kowalski.
"There needs to be some analysis done, but there was never a concern for anyone's health or safety. It wasn't suspicious enough to do specialized testing.
"The file is currently open and no charges have been made. Kowalski said this is the first incident of this type he's seen in Richmond since joining the Richmond RCMP in 2010.