Mayor says 1st responders are told to call bomb squad, wear hazmat suits if drone is discovered
A New Jersey mayor told Fox News host Harris Faulkner Friday that first responders were told to contact the bomb squad and wear hazmat suits if they encountered one of the mysterious drones.
The drones have appeared over the sky of New Jersey, in some cases flying in formation, in recent weeks, according to video footage obtained by the Daily Caller. Belleville Mayor Michael Melham told Faulkner he had just received a phone call from his emergency management team before coming to the studio, having received guidance from the state.
“That guidance does say two different things,” Melham told Faulkner. “First of all, if there is a downed drone in our vicinity, we’re immediately to call the bomb squad of our county and second, our fire department has been instructed to make sure they wear hazmat suits.”
“So, if something falls out of the sky that people have seen, and some of these things are as big as an SUV, if that happens, you are to treat this more than a plane crash?” Faulkner asked. “It is treated like an attack on the homeland?”
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Melham told Faulkner that officials were unsure if the mysterious drones were carrying a payload. He then said that Wednesday, he was one of 200 mayors briefed in on what the state knew.
“The thing that we did take away from that is we were told very point-blank that these drones are hovering over our critical infrastructure,” Melham told Faulkner. “Now, that’s interesting because they aren’t doing any harm, just hovering over there. We’re also told there is no credible threat. When you start putting things together that they’re telling us, critical infrastructure, no critical threat, they’re unwilling to shoot them down, they’re unwilling to do a temporary ban, and we can see them, they have lights on and something is not adding up here and it sounds like it might very be our highest level government, it might be government assets that are being deployed as a countermeasure.”
“As a countermeasure? So two things can be true,” Faulkner responded. “We know the timeline matches when this so-called ship, mothership, whatever it is left Iran and appeared somewhere off our eastern seaboard. Now, if it were chock full of drones and released those drones, that timeline fits according to Van Drew and others. So, if that’s the case, of course then, we would put things in the sky because you know the government would know.”
Faulkner also read social media posts from some New Jersey residents indicating they might want to try shooting down the drones. Melham told Faulkner efforts to take out the drones could land people in hot water.
“That is not lawful,” Melham said. “Drones are considered aircraft and FAA, you cannot shoot an aircraft in New Jersey. We’re being advised to tell residents not to shoot them down.”
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