Anthrax, Again?
March 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment
Investigators are trying to learn why sensors at two military mail facilities in the Washington area detected signs of anthrax on two pieces of mail.
They are not sure whether the discoveries are signs of an attack.
As testing continued Tuesday, President Bush was being regularly updated on the situation, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said.
“The intial testing came back positive. There was some additional testing that was done and it was inconclusive,” he said. “We’re still waiting on more definitive results.”
The two pieces of mail, the origins of which were not provided, had been irradiated, so officials believed any anthrax in them was inert when they triggered alarms at the two mail facilities on Monday.
Additional tests and other sensors at the two facilities, one of them at the Pentagon and the other nearby, found no presence of the bacteria, which can be used as a biological weapon. There were no initial reports of illness.
The Pentagon’s mail delivery site, which is separate from the main Pentagon building, was evacuated and shut down Monday after sensors triggered an alarm around 10:30 a.m., spokesman Glenn Flood said. It was expected to remain closed until at least Tuesday while the investigation continued.
It was not clear when sensors at the second Defense Department mailroom were triggered. Pentagon officials said only that a nearby satellite mail facility was closed.
But firefighters in nearby Fairfax County, Va., reported that a military mailroom in the Bailey’s Crossroads business district a few miles from the Pentagon had been shut down after a hazardous material was detected, and no one was allowed to leave that building.
Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Cmdr. Jane Campbell said mail at both facilities had been irradiated before arriving at either one. The radiation treatment should kill any anthrax bacteria, but sensors would still be able to detect it.
She had no information about the origin of the two pieces of mail.
Comments