White River Junction
The individual, who officials declined to identify, was unarmed, and no one was injured in the incident, which occurred around 11 a.m. There was no ongoing safety threat, VA spokeswoman Katherine Tang said early Tuesday afternoon.
Authorities gave the “all clear” and reopened Building 28, an administrative building that includes Veterans Benefit Administration offices, around 1:30 p.m.
The safety concern was isolated to Building 28, so patient care was not affected by the incident, Tang said.
The VA’s leadership called for the evacuation “out of precaution,” after an employee noticed that a veteran was exhibiting “out of normal behavior,” Tang said. There were no weapons involved, she said.
She did not immediately know how many employees were evacuated, but described it as one of the facility’s “smaller buildings.”
Authorities “didn’t find anything,” so employees were allowed to re-enter the building, Tang said.
She said the White River Junction VA, like all VA medical centers around the country, has armed federal police officers on campus.
The VA police notified members of the Hartford Police Department that they were evacuating a building, but the situation did not escalate to a point where Hartford police needed to respond, said Hartford police Sgt. Karl Ebbighausen.
Such incidents are relatively unusual, said Tang. In her nearly four years at the White River Junction VA, this was the first time a building had to be evacuated due to a safety concern, she said.
In September, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon was evacuated, and those who could not evacuate sheltered in place, after a 70-year-old woman was shot and killed in the intensive care unit.
Her son, Travis Frink, of Warwick, R.I., has been charged in the case.
No one else was injured during the incident, but patient care was interrupted. DHMC’s emergency room stopped accepting transfers for a couple of hours, and during that time the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Advanced Response Team helicopter could not land.
Valley News Staff Writer Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
