Summit Requested After Anthrax Scare Near Washington

The anthrax scares this week at two U.S. Defense Department mail facilities in Northern Virginia have highlighted continuing problems in coordinating the response to a WMD event, officials said (see GSN, March 16).

“We’ve spent a lot of time and money to improve regional coordination and preparedness,” said David Marin, deputy staff director for U.S. Representative Tom Davis (R-Va.). “But this week’s scare suggests we’re not ready for prime time yet.”

Lawmakers and state and local officials in the Washington, D.C. area have complained that the Defense Department did not adequately inform them Monday after tests indicated a mail room at the Pentagon had been contaminated by anthrax, the Washington Post reported. Fairfax County emergency officials said they were not aware of the Pentagon situation even as they responded several hours later to an alarm indicating a biological substance was present at a Defense Department mailroom in their jurisdiction.

Both events now appear to have been false alarms, according to the Post.

“This may well be forgiven given the way the testing is coming out, but it certainly can’t be excused,” Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams said. “Not to have upfront contacts with the Department of Defense is really inexcusable.”

Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said several fire departments “in the immediate vicinity of the Pentagon” were informed of the investigation at the Defense Department headquarters.

“I cannot say if the word ‘anthrax’ was used,” he said. “When you have something initially, you try to be as quick as possible. … We weren’t going to go into a whole dissertation.”

Davis is calling for a “regional response summit” to address tensions that arose in the wake of the response. Federal, state and local officials will go over in detail the times at which the Pentagon contacted local agencies and which agencies received the news, the Post reported (Lisa Rein, Washington Post, March 17).

Emergency responders also had troubles coordinating their response this week because the Defense Department uses different detection and response systems than those of other federal agencies, the Post reported.

Local hazardous materials teams had trouble with sensor equipment that was unlike technology used by the Postal Service and Homeland Security Department, said Virginia Health Commissioner Robert Stroube. Scientists found it difficult to interpret the report from the Pentagon’s contract laboratory as that facility is not on the CDC network of bioterror-response laboratories, the Post reported (Spencer Hsu, Washington Post, March 17).

The FBI has initiated a noncriminal investigation to determine why tests at the contract laboratory indicated the Pentagon mailroom had been contaminated by anthrax and on what caused triggered the sensor at the Fairfax County site, the Associated Press reported.

Officials theorize that a sample from the Pentagon was inadvertently contaminated while being tested at Commonwealth Biotechnology Inc. in Richmond, Va.

The firm’s chief operating officer, Robert Harris, said he was not yet ready to accept that theory.

“The issue of contamination is questionable,” he said. It remains “a possibility” that the original sample had been positive for anthrax, Harris said (Laura Meckler, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, March 17).

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