Pentagon officials retrieving mail during anthrax alert

  • Published
  • By Kathleen T. Rhem
  • American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON (AFPN) --  Pentagon officials are working to collect an estimated 8,000 pieces of mail that passed through the building’s mail-processing facility between March 10 and 14.

A test done March 14 on a sample of mail collected March 10 from the Pentagon’s remote delivery facility indicated a preliminary positive for anthrax bacteria, Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said. The mail there had been taken to 12 distribution nodes throughout the Pentagon.

It now is being moved back to a designated area in the remote facility, he said.

Officials said they believe it “highly unlikely” that any mail that passed through the facility during the specified timeframe has been delivered to individual offices, he said.

Mr Flood could not, however, confirm whether any mail from that timeframe moved through the facility to an office complex in nearby Falls Church, Va., where a separate biological alarm indicated the presence of anthrax there March 14. Local officials shut down three buildings leased by the Defense Department after an alarm sounded in one building there.

So far, individual test results on swabs taken from 263 people who may have passed through the facility during the specified timeframe are all negative for exposure to anthrax, Mr. Flood said. About 200 people work in the facility, and the others are people who may have come in contact with the area.

Officials said they hope to reopen at last part of the delivery facility, which is not in but next to, the Pentagon building, within the next day or so.

“The goal is to get the (remote facility) up and running as soon as possible,” Mr. Flood said.

Mail-processing operations take up only about 10 percent of the 200,000-square-foot facility. One possibility is to cordon off the mail-sorting areas for further testing and investigation and reopen the rest of the facility, officials said.

Another possibility officials said they are considering is to move the facility’s delivery-screening function to another location temporarily.

Mr. Flood said it is important to resume some of that function because it is not just mail that is being affected. All deliveries to the Pentagon -- including office and cleaning supplies and food for the building’s eateries -- have been halted for the time being.