A FAKE Nazi chemical bomb complete with swastika insignia sparked a bomb scare in Naval Base on Monday morning.
Police and military bomb technicians were called to a logistic company’s yard in Beard Street after an orange and metal canister filled with a liquid and with a Nazi swastika label on the side (pictured) was found on a table.
Police believe the fake bomb was a film prop.
A full-scale emergency response including Fire and Emergency Services Authority (FESA), Kwinana police, bomb squads and State Government agency ChemCentre was sent to the site.
An employee of the company was believed to have found the prop.
A Police media spokesman said the police and defence force bomb technicians followed standard procedure and set up an exclusion zone after FESA officers who first attended the scene about 10.30am called them to the site.
It was believed a bar code and the appearance of the canister led technicians to determine it was a film prop and nothing more sinister.
The ChemCentre tested the prop and the orange liquid inside was believed to be coloured water.
Acting Kwinana officer-in-charge Senior Sergeant Ross Adam said police did not yet know how the film prop ended up in the crib room at the site.
“We don’t know how it got there, we don’t know if someone has brought it in or a truckie passing through had left it there, but it was a safety concern for us; it was definitely something unusual,” he said.
Sgt Adam said the business was cordoned off but not evacuated as there were no staff on site at the time.
Despite the object only being a movie prop, Sgt Adam said it caused concern initially.
“Anything that looks like that at all, we have to treat with the utmost caution,” he said.
“We can’t take something like that for granted but it seems to have come from a German movie company, which apparently has sent a lot of similar props out to Australia.”
Sgt Adam said it was a good test for the state’s Chemical, Biological, Radiological Emergency Management (WestPlan CBR) response procedures.