A firefighter is decontaminated after a suspicious powder was found at Whangarei Fire Station. It turned out the powder was a crushed biscuit. Photo / John Stone
Nearly 10 years after a prank gone wrong sparked a contamination scare and shut down a fire station, the culprit can be revealed: Kaeo fire chief and notorious practical joker Lindsay Murray.
During last week's presentation of Mr Murray's 50-year Gold Star for five decades of volunteer service it was
left to senior station officer Les Jackson to recount his chief's most infamous joke, played in 2007 when he was still employed as a fire investigator.
Tradition at the time dictated that if a photo of one of the investigators ended up in the paper he had to shout the others morning tea. On one occasion Mr Lindsay had no time to head down to Whangarei to put on the morning tea so he popped a water biscuit into an envelope and posted it to the city's fire station with a note saying: "I hope you can share this".
However, by the time the letter had been through the postal system the biscuit had been reduced to a white powder.
The country had just experienced a series of white powder scares so the mystery envelope triggered a major security alert. The unimpressed receptionist had to go through a cold decontamination shower, Whangarei Fire Station was evacuated and the powder was rushed to the airport at Onerahi to be flown to Wellington for analysis.
