Hart Building Remains Closed For New Attempt at Cleanup
washingtonpost.com
By John Lancaster
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 15, 2001; Page A14
Two weeks after it was fumigated with chlorine dioxide gas, part of the Hart Senate Office Building remains slightly contaminated with anthrax bacteria and there is no word on when the building will reopen, authorities said yesterday. They planned to begin fumigating part of the building's ventilation system last night.
Trace amounts of anthrax spores turned up in nine of 377 samples taken from surfaces inside the offices of Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) since the suite was sealed and filled with chlorine dioxide gas on Dec. 1, said Richard Rupert, the Environmental Protection Agency's on-site coordinator.
Rupert described the test results as encouraging. "We're in the homestretch," he said at an afternoon news conference. "We have found minimal contamination."
Authorities also said they had completed their cleanup efforts in the Longworth House Office Building, where several members' offices have been closed for decontamination. Members and staff will be able to return to those offices next week, said Lt. Dan Nichols, a Capitol Police spokesman.
Nichols acknowledged that he could not supply an opening date for the Hart Building, where the Capitol Hill anthrax scare began on Oct. 15 when a Daschle aide opened a letter containing a finely milled form of the bacteria that spreads easily through air. The building was closed two days later.
"We're being guided by public safety," Nichols said, declining to speculate on whether the timetable should be measured in weeks or months. "Until we can do the sampling, get the results back and finish remediation, we're not going to let" people back in the building.
The reopening date will depend to some degree on the success of the second fumigation effort, which involves pumping chlorine dioxide into ventilation ducts that serve Daschle's suite in the southeast corner of the Hart Building. Authorities said the operation will be completed within 24 hours, during which streets surrounding the building will be closed to traffic -- in part because vehicle emissions interfere with equipment for detecting any chlorine dioxide that might escape.
Tiny amounts of the gas escaped during the first fumigation two weeks ago, but at levels far below any potential threat to human health, Nichols said. Authorities have been blanketing nearby areas of Capitol Hill with leaflets to allay public fears and alert residents to traffic disruptions associated with the fumigation work.
The decontamination effort has proved complex. Earlier this week, environmental workers packed up books, files, computers and other items exposed to anthrax spores in the Hart Building and began hauling them to a company in Richmond for treatment with ethylene oxide, which is used for sanitizing medical devices. They are using a liquid form of chlorine dioxide to treat "hot spots" in the building. And scientists are still evaluating almost 3,000 test strips placed inside Daschle's suite during the first fumigation to determine its effectiveness.
"The progress appears to be moving about as we were told it was expected to be," Daschle told reporters yesterday. "It is our expectation we'll be ready to move in early, right after the first of the year."
But Daschle also acknowledged the uncertainties surrounding the decontamination effort. "Do I have doubts? Yeah, I've got plenty of doubts. . . . We're plowing a lot of new ground. There are a lot of pioneering efforts underway here, so we have to be realistic, and we have to be patient."
He added, "I don't blame people for being skeptical."
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