Crowd Seeks Details of Brentwood Cleanup

Authorities Try to Offer Reassurance on Safety

The coming decontamination of the District's principal mail-processing plant drew hundreds of postal workers and residents to a neighborhood meeting last night, seeking assurances that no anthrax spores will remain and none of the toxic gas that will be used to kill them will leak.

Nearly filling the 800 seats at Isle of Patmos Baptist Church on Rhode Island Avenue, not far from the quarantined Brentwood plant in Northeast Washington, the polite but worried crowd peppered officials with questions about their plan to pump chlorine dioxide gas into the building sometime this spring.

Robert Brannum, a D.C. public school teacher, said in an interview before the meeting that residents of the surrounding neighborhood are "not only scared of that building, they're scared of getting mail" and that Brentwood should be torn down and built anew if there is no "reasonable" certitude it can be cleansed.

"I'm concerned with all the nooks and crannies of those machines," a Brentwood worker in uniform told the panel of postal, federal and city officials who came to the church at the behest of D.C. Council member Vincent B. Orange Sr. (D-Ward 5), whose district includes the tainted building.

Repeatedly, the officials emphasized the precautions they would take. Brentwood will reopen only after no spores can be detected inside, they said, and they will employ a tough air-monitoring system to detect any seepage of the gas, which dissipates quickly in sunlight but can cause runny noses and burning eyes.

Thomas G. Day, the U.S. Postal Service's vice president for engineering, said a perimeter would be imposed around Brentwood during fumigation to keep nearby residents and entrepreneurs at a safe distance. How large that exclusion zone would be has not been determined.

"That's a critical aspect," Day said.

At one point, the director of the city's health department, Ivan C.A. Walks, vowed that he would demonstrate that Brentwood is safe after decontamination by taking his 2-year-old son to buy stamps at the plant's post office. Later, when a questioner noted that Walks is stepping down May 1, he said that the health department would be left in expert hands and that he would still be active as a citizen.

Brentwood has been shut since Oct. 21, after two terrorist letters leaking anthrax spores passed through the plant on their way to Capitol Hill. Two Brentwood workers died of inhalation anthrax (case 15 and case 16), two others became seriously ill (case 14 and case 17) and the entire workforce of 2,000 was urged to take preventive antibiotics.

The Hart Senate Office Building also was contaminated. Environmental and health officials elected to clean it first, climbing a steep learning curve in the use of chlorine dioxide gas. Hart's successful decontamination has become the blueprint for Brentwood, although the plant represents a greater logistical challenge because there are 17.5 million cubic feet of space to be cleansed, compared with less than 100,000 cubic feet at Hart.

Many of the questioners last night were postal workers unhappy with their employer, a reflection of a feeling many have that there was less concern for them during the anthrax crisis than there was for Hart workers and others on Capitol Hill.

"We're the ones who have to go back in that building," Brentwood worker Geralette Magruder told the officials, complaining that she and her colleagues have not been kept up to date about cleanup plans.