6 years ago
U.S. Park Police say the Dirksen Senate Office building will reopen this morning and employees should report to work.
The building was closed only as a precaution while EPA crews used poisonous gas to kill anthrax spores in the nearby Hart Senate building.
Using toxic gas and other decontaminants, Environmental Protection Agency crews wrapped up their cleanup Sunday of anthrax spores in a dozen senators' suites and drew samples for lab tests. Chlorine dioxide gas was safely dissipated from Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's 3,000-square-foot office suite on the fifth and sixth floors after it was spread for more than 20 hours ? about eight longer than planned. Only liquid or foam decontaminants were needed in 11 other senators' offices in the Hart Senate Office Building, said Richard Rupert, the EPA's onsite coordinator. Workers breathed easier after the level of gas became undetectable but still wore protective suits, face masks with filters and rubber gloves "to protect against spores because we can't confirm they're dead yet," Rupert said. Early readings put the level of chlorine dioxide inside at about 800 parts per million, but it had quickly dropped to 16 parts per million early Sunday morning, he said. The goal was to eliminate all traces inside.
Lab results from test strips and wipe samples were expected within a week.
Anthrax bacteria escaped Oct. 15 when a Daschle aide opened an anthrax-tainted letter. The senator's suite was sealed off with duct tape, plastic sheets and plywood with foam.
"The other 11 suites are just superficially contaminated ... in mail-handling areas and believed to be from letters that were cross-contaminated by the Daschle letter," Rupert said.
"What we're finding is that wherever someone threw this letter on the desk, we'll find a little bit of contamination. ... It's probably the kind that presented no risk."
EPA technicians ventured inside Sunday after having spread the gas the day earlier and then inserting a second chemical, sodium bisulfite, overnight to dissipate the gas. They collected as many as 3,000 test strips from inside the Daschle suite, or about one per every square foot.
They also took photographs and videotapes, checked readings and disconnected some equipment. No injuries were reported other than some minor sunburn.
"We sampled the heck out of it," Rupert said. "There's no threat posed by the chlorine dioxide gas any longer."
Sterile gauze wipe and vacuum samples also were to be collected Monday to make it possible to reopen the shuttered building where 50 senators have offices.
Daschle, D-S.D., said the operation went smoothly.
"The monitoring would indicate, at least so far, that everything that we had expected would happen has happened," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
It was the first anthrax decontamination in the United States using chlorine dioxide, which began pumping into the building early Saturday.
The adjacent Dirksen Senate Office Building, connected by hallways with Hart, and the Hart underground garage were closed as a precaution. Capitol Police spokesman Lt. Dan Nichols said the Dirksen building would reopen Monday. It was unclear whether the Hart garage also would open.
By Sunday morning, a $1 million EPA bus outfitted with sensitive monitoring equipment was no longer needed to ensure the safety of the air outside. It detected only faint traces of the gas escaping, far below the 25 parts per billion exposure acceptable to District of Columbia health officials, the EPA said.
"We're very pleased with the way things went. The two to three weeks of planning we went through paid off," Rupert said. "There were really no big surprises and the minor problems we've encountered we've been able to overcome."
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
