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Search for anthrax expands
Saturday, Oct. 27, 2001
 
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AP Photo
Funeral home workers Stan Ellis, left, and Delante Rawls move flowers at the funeral of U.S. postal worker, Joseph P. Curseen, Jr., who died of anthrax, during his funeral in Washington Saturday, Oct. 27.
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON — The Postal Service buried a mail handler killed by anthrax — the second funeral in two days — while the search for the bacteria widened Saturday to thousands of businesses in Washington and 30 mail distribution centers. Authorities worried that there might be a second anthrax-laced letter, or more, not yet discovered.

With the nation on edge over anthrax-by-mail, the post office signed a $40 million contract to buy eight electron-beam devices to sanitize letters and packages. The equipment will be used first in Washington, where the anthrax scare has spread from mail centers for Congress and the White House to the Supreme Court and the CIA.

About 68 tons of letters and other material from Washington were being trucked to a plant in Lima, Ohio, to be decontaminated with electron beams normally used to sterilize hospital equipment.

Dr. Gregory Martin of the National Naval Medical Center said that anthrax contamination discovered Friday at three congressional offices in the Longworth House Office Building was low level.

``We feel quite confident that we will see no cases of anthrax out of the congressmen's office,'' he said. Workers in those offices and at the Supreme Court are being treated with doxycycline as a precaution, he said, and people who have visited the congressional offices where spores were found were also urged to seek the antibiotic. A Supreme Court offsite mail handling office also was found to be contaminated and Martin says doxycycline was being given to workers there.

Anthrax turned up first in Florida — where one man died — and then in New York before striking Washington on Oct. 9 in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.

The two dead mail handlers worked at Washington's now closed Brentwood mail distribution center, which processes mail for federal agencies and.

The funeral for Thomas Morris Jr. of Suitland, Md. , was held Friday and burial services for Joseph Curseen Jr., of Clinton, Md., were Saturday. Flags at postal facilities which had been lowered in memory of the two were to return to full staff on Sunday.

The White House said President Bush had sent letters to the families of the two.

Two postal workers and a mailroom employee of the State Department have been diagnosed with the often deadly inhaled form of anthrax and are hospitalized in northern Virginia in serious but stable condition.

In addition, the post office said 23 workers in the Washington area are hospitalized with ``suspicious symptoms,'' but anthrax has not been confirmed.

In addition, several other people were being treated for the less serious skin form of anthrax.

Scattered instances of contamination have been turning up in mail rooms around Washington.

``We don't know if we have cross-contamination from the original Senator Daschle letter or if there is another letter out there that we need to be concerned about,'' Lt. Dan Nichols of the U.S. Capitol Police said Saturday.

Some 10,000 postal workers have been placed on antibiotics as a precaution and on Friday Washington's public health director, Dr. Ivan Walks, urged the same for workers in private mailrooms that receive material from the Brentwood station. That, he said, could cover 2,000 to 4,000 mailrooms.

Dr. Patrick Meehan of the CDC warned that thousands more people who work with the mail will need to begin taking preventive antibiotics. ``It could be an astronomical number,'' he said.

The post office expanded its testing for contamination beyond the known sites in Washington, New York, New Jersey and Florida to 30 mail sorting and distribution centers along the East Coast and as far west as Arizona. An additional 200 sites across the country were expected to be selected for random testing for any signs of anthrax.

In New Jersey the Princeton post office was closed Saturday after signs of anthrax were found there.

The first of about 45 truckloads of Washington mail to be decontaminated began arriving Thursday at a Titan Corp. plant in Ohio. The mail is sanitized with radiation. Letters will be put in packages, put on a conveyor belt and irradiated for about five minutes, killing bacteria — including anthrax — that might be present.

Meanwhile the San Diego-based company will begin delivering similar equipment next month starting with the Washington area.

While the search for the person who mailed the anthrax continues, questions remain over whether it is part of some foreign action or a domestic criminal. Handwriting analysis and profiling are leading investigators to increasingly suspect that one person wrote the three letters contaminated with anthrax and that the person spent significant time in the United States, officials say.

The officials cautioned that they have not identified specific suspects and continue to consider a variety of theories, including that a deranged U.S. resident with a biochemical background, a terrorist or hate group, a foreign country or some combination carried out the attacks.

``We do not have conclusive evidence — nothing that rules in or rules out any source, foreign or domestic,'' said White House spokeswoman Jeanne Mamo.

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