PEP Jan. 2002: Anthrax Warriors.

Members on the front lines in the war against anthrax

Water guardians

BY DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Two weeks after the Towers crumbled, four men in hooded suits and respirators entered the Valhalla office of the Dept. of Environmental Protection, about 50 miles north of New York City.

An employee had found a suspicious looking white powder.

Suspecting anthrax, he called DEP’s upstate emergency response team, which immediately evacuated the building, sealed air vents, collected samples and decontaminated the area.

“We’re proud to do a professional job and safeguard people,” said Watershed Maintainer Michael Cassar, a Local 376 member and one of seven employees in the high-tech Compliance and Remediation Dept.

The unit was formed 18-months ago after DEP pled guilty to violating the Clean Water Act. Local 375’s Lyn Sadosky, an Associate Project Manager III, was called to build the team, which includes two supervisors in Local 1322. They receive specialized training and HAZMAT certification to respond to biohazards in the city’s 2,000-square-mile watershed area — one of the largest drinking water systems in the world.

Although the Valhalla samples proved negative, the incident highlighted the importance of the team’s work. Anthrax, and other biological threats, have challenged environmental agencies to beef up security and support at reservoirs.

“Since Sept. 11, we look at things differently,” said Watershed Maintainer Ted Pollack. “We are more aware. We examine more closely.”

More permanent staff and DEP police are necessary. Ms. Sadosky and local management have pressed to increase the team fourfold to 28, but their proposals languish in the bureaucracy.

Instead, to meet U.S. Army Corp. of Engineers requirements, DEP continues to hire consultant firms. The contractors are paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for cleanups. The response team has to oversee these hired guns, while team members work a six-day schedule with antiquated equipment. They respond to emergencies in a 17-year-old truck they salvaged and refurbished. It’s a frustrating situation, said Deputy Director Sadosky.

Despite being overworked and understaffed, team morale remains high. Sadosky said, “DEP can hire all the consultants in the world but only full time employees can protect the water system.”

Spore drivers

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

John Ponce sped north along the FDR Drive, the highway closed to all traffic except his truck — and its police escort. At his side was a sealed metal case, the size of a shoebox.

Its contents made him contemplate the new meaning of his work as a Motor Vehicle Operator for the Health Dept.
The container held biopsy samples from the corpse of Kathy Nguyen, the 61-year-old Bronx woman who succumbed Oct. 25 to a mysterious case of inhalation anthrax. Ponce rushed the container to a waiting jet bound for the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

“I thought about that poor woman, about the seriousness of biological warfare, about whether I could contract anthrax myself,” said Mr. Ponce.

Normally, Health Dept. MVOs haul medical supplies to schools and hospitals and drive clean-up crews to vacant lots with health code violations. But after Sept. 11, Mr. Ponce and about 60 others worked nonstop on the recovery effort. Six weeks later, their jobs took on added urgency when the department called on them to transfer deadly anthrax samples and the CDC experts who detect the often-fatal disease.

In the weeks following the attack that stunned the world, the city’s vulnerability was challenged again when anthrax-laced letters were mailed to newspapers, television networks and Gov. George W. Pataki’s office through the Morgan Post Office at 34th Street.

Anthrax cannot be transmitted from person to person, but spores, whether inhaled or touched, can prove fatal if a person fails to get appropriate medical attention.

As CDC doctors descended on New York City to handle the perplexing crisis, “Municipal employees again were called on to go above and beyond the call of duty,” said Mark Rosenthal, president of Local 983, which represents the MVOs. “Not one member refused,” he added. “They responded willingly, out of a sense of patriotic duty.”

The MVOs drove the sealed samples from stricken sites to Health Dept. labs, to airports and straight to Albany, where sophisticated laboratories yielded test results overnight. On 24-hour call, many of the drivers worked 30-50 overtime hours in the weeks that followed. Management and labor responded with tremendous teamwork to protect millions from a potentially deadly situation, Ponce said.

“From the commissioner to the newest hire, everyone was dedicated to helping out,” he said. “And if we are called on, we will do it again — no question.”

Bioterror lab team

By GREGORY N. HEIRES

A few years ago, Research Scientist Dr. Sally Beatrice and Dr. Mike Heller helped set up a plan to prepare New York City for bioterrorism. So, when the anthrax attacks came, they thought they and their colleagues were ready.

More than 75 Health Dept. staffers, including Research Scientists and Chemists in Local 375, anchored the city’s front-line defenses. Despite all the planning, Dr. Beatrice said she and her colleagues were stunned by the enormity and vast scope of the anthrax attack that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist strike on the World Trade Center.

The crisis hit in October, when letters vectored the deadly spores to local media and postal workers in October. But the response actually began three years ago, when a cadre of Health Dept. professionals started drafting a blueprint for coping with a bioterrorist incident.

On the citywide Chemical and Bioterrorism Task Force, they worked closely with federal law enforcement and disease control experts.

Facilities and staff had to be ready. The team helped set up a bioterrorism lab at a Health Dept. site. Dr. Beatrice and Research Scientists Dr. Mike Heller and Dr. George Williams ran a training program for employees.
Anthrax is an acute infectious disease, which can be fatal without speedy treatment. It infects humans through skin contact, ingestion or inhalation of spores.

When the first cases were discovered, they embarked on what Ruth Katz, president of Local 375’s Dept. of Health Chapter 10, called “a wild ride of high drama and long hours.”

Testing lab expands to fight anthrax
Their lab tested the spores that were mailed to the offices of NBC and CBS. Almost overnight, they expanded to meet the need and set up a system for tracking samples delivered by police and public health workers.

“We went from one lab with three people to seven labs and two special high-containment and high-security areas,” Dr. Beatrice said. As potential cases soared from nearly none to 120 a day, they cultured thousands of possible anthrax specimens over several weeks.

Dr. Heller’s role has involved overseeing technicians doing the lab studies, ensuring that conditions were safe on the job, and working closely with Dr. Beatrice and federal officials to make sure the emergency response plan ran smoothly.
Dr. Heller, who is the department’s director of toxicology and general toxicology and environmental sciences, was on the scene at 3 a.m. Oct. 21 when New York’s first specimen was tested — and turned out to be sugar.

“That first night, I wasn’t so worried about my personal safety, because we were wearing protective suits, and we knew you can be treated with antibiotics if you’re exposed to anthrax,” he said. “What we were concerned about was whether the procedures we set up would prevent contamination of the facility. But everything worked out.”

“When we watched those buildings come down, we felt powerless,” said Dr. Beatrice, who is director of retrovirology and immunobiology at the Dept. of Health. “When the anthrax hit, we felt we could make a difference.”