Skip to content

Staffers Return to Longworth After Evacuation

Updated: 6:34 p.m.Staffers were allowed back into the Longworth House Office Building at about 5:40 p.m. Wednesday, two hours after Capitol Police evacuated the building because of a suspicious package on the seventh floor.Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said the department has removed the package from the building and is bringing it to a federal facility in Quantico, Va., to be “rendered safe.—The Virginia State Police will help the Capitol Police deliver the package in a motorcade, she added.Officers found the package at about 12:20 p.m., and the Hazardous Devices Section conducted tests that were “inconclusive,— prompting an evacuation at about 3:30 p.m. Schneider did not give details on what happened in the intervening three hours.“Out of an abundance of caution, USCP has determined that the safest course of action is to evacuate Longworth and relocate occupants to Cannon until the package is safely removed from Longworth,— Schneider said in an e-mail earlier Wednesday. The Capitol Police respond to several suspicious packages a day, almost always without incident. Rarely is a building evacuated.

Recent Stories

House passes stopgap funding bill to avert shutdown

Stopgap funding bills hung up in both chambers

Who are the House Republicans who opposed the stopgap budget bill?

Taking it to the limit — Congressional Hits and Misses

Feinstein broke glass ceilings during decades of Judiciary Committee work

Colleagues honor Feinstein as death leaves Senate vacancy