Black Friday surprise: hazmat team visits North Bend Theatre after urine misdelivery

Meanwhile packed ‘Frozen 2’ screening was happening inside theater.

By Ashley Hiruko • December 6, 2019 1:30 am
Responders made a showing outside the North Bend movie theater on Nov. 29, after someone called and reported a box they discovered. It was full of urine. Photo courtesy of Eastside Firefighters.
Responders made a showing outside the North Bend movie theater on Nov. 29, after someone called and reported a box they discovered. It was full of urine. Photo courtesy of Eastside Firefighters.

It was a little more yellow than black last Friday when someone at the North Bend movie theater was left to deal with a misdelivered package of urine.

The person opened the package and “saw wet stuff on their hands,” according to Eastside Fire and Rescue (EFR) spokesperson Capt. Steve Johnson. Johnson couldn’t say who the person was, but an article by TIME identified the person as theater manager Skyler Possert. (The Valley Record had not heard back from the theater to confirm the claim by the time the paper went to press.)

The box was marked “human substance highly infectious.”

“And really it turned out to be nothing,” Johnson said.

At 5:23 p.m., responders got the emergency call and according to the Eastside Firefighters twitter account, five hazmat techs responded to the scene. The incident also spawned police response.

Following protocol, one patient was transported to the local hospital for evaluation. They were released and luckily found to have zero injuries.

That’s because the wet substance inside the package was actually urine. That’s what Harborview Medical Center determined, after they were delivered the product.

“It was just shipped to the wrong address by mistake,” Johnson said, adding that he believed it was supposed to be delivered to somewhere in Tacoma.

Jason Refsland was at the North Bend Theatre with his two kids for a 5 p.m. showing of “Frozen 2” that evening. The movie had just ended when the audio was shut off. Theater staff told the moviegoers — comprised of mostly small children — that due to police activity in the front of the theater, they would have to exit out the back.

He said everyone walked in a calm manner, and that he passed fire trucks on his way to his car. He recalled the most activity was happening in the parking area near the adjacent Bank of America.

“I assumed — I thought maybe it was a car accident out front,” Refsland recalled, three days later by phone. “That was… the only thing I could think of.” He hoped police didn’t detain someone with ill intentions of doing something in the theater.

It wasn’t until he returned home that he learned what actually happened outside the movie theater that evening.