Decontamination

Master firefighters Bill Pappas (above left) and Steven Bettis carry a dummy into a decontamination tent, while other firefighters (below) learn how to to build and install wooden braces for damaged buildings in a mock disaster drill at the former Bennigan's restaurant site in Columbia yesterday.

Sure things looked no surer than the business opportunity presented to TVI Corp. on Sept. 11, 2001. The Glenn Dale company made decontamination shelters and other equipment used by rescuers after the Pentagon terrorist attack. Government was about to blow big money on such products, and TVI's chief executive soon spoke confidently of "increased interest," "numerous product inquiries" and "higher order flow in the coming year." So how in the world could TVI flub it so spectacularly? Last week TVI stock was trading for 66 cents, one-tenth of its level three years ago. The company's CEO and another top executive just left under a cloud, with the company turning evidence over to unidentified authorities.

Like so many corporations that want to maintain pristine images, Black & Decker Inc. would prefer to clean up environmental contamination at its Hampstead plant quietly and without public scrutiny. Just because a closed clean-up may be in the company's interest doesn't necessarily mean it's in the public interest.As The Sun's Joe Mathews reported, Black & Decker's attorneys went to great lengths to keep the public out of the clean-up process even though the pollution affects ground water that flows beyond the plant and the clean-up calls for large amounts of treated water to be discharged into a county stream.

A Chuck E. Cheese's restaurant in eastern Baltimore County, where members of a family say they dined before becoming ill last weekend, will remain closed until it has hired a certified food handler and completed decontamination, county inspectors said yesterday. "They're now in a position where they're having to go through a complete cleaning process and sanitize everything from chairs to play equipment," said David A.C. Carroll, head of the county's Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management.

West Friendship Elementary School will be closed for the remainder of the school year, which ends Friday, because of asbestos contamination, a Howard County schools spokeswoman said yesterday. Pupils will not have to make up the missed days because this is an emergency situation, spokeswoman Patti Caplan said. The school was shut down Monday after construction workers crushed asbestos floor tiles in the gym over the weekend, releasing the cancer-causing mineral into the air, where it can be dangerous if inhaled.

West Friendship Elementary School will be closed for the remainder of the school year, which ends Friday, because of asbestos contamination, a Howard County schools spokeswoman said yesterday. Pupils will not have to make up the missed days because this is an emergency situation, spokeswoman Patti Caplan said. The school was shut down Monday after construction workers crushed asbestos floor tiles in the gym over the weekend, releasing the cancer-causing mineral into the air, where it can be dangerous if inhaled.

A new report for Congress says a planned $225 million incinerator for destroying aging chemical agents at Aberdeen Proving Ground could be used to get rid of other contaminated waste at the base.The report, sent to Congress April 9, says the incinerator could be converted after the chemical agent stockpile is destroyed to decontaminate scraps from tainted storage containers, weapons and buildings.But opponents to the planned incinerator said the study only strengthens their argument that the plant should never be built.

Cleaning up the invisible trail of biological poison left by the anthrax letters mailed last year will cost hundreds of millions of dollars by the time the decontamination effort is complete in 2004 or later, government officials say. The cleanup reached a new peak this week, with the long-delayed fumigation of the huge Brentwood mail-sorting facility in northeast Washington and the start of what is expected to be an 18-month rehabilitation of the State...

Howard County has ordered millions of dollars of fire and public safety equipment that leaders say will help address safety and communication concerns in the event of a disaster. Many of the six vehicles will replace run-down ones, and a few offer technologies that have never been used in the county. Workers inside a new mobile communications hub will be able to view live footage from the department's helicopter for the first time, and the truck will be wired with the county's first mobile network that routes radio and cell phone communications over the Internet.

WASHINGTON -- Baltimore is preparing for a terrorist attack.Emergency officials will soon stockpile nerve gas antidotes, hold decontamination drills and train a medical strike team to respond to a chemical, biological or nuclear terrorist attack."

Nobody could say how much - if any - anthrax might be clinging to the thousands of tabloid photos of Princess Diana, Elizabeth Taylor, Big Foot and who knows how many alien love-children. But the decontamination experts from Baltimore-based Marcor Remediation Inc. knew the spores had proved deadly for the Boca Raton, Fla., photo editor who kept watch over them until his death four years ago. So while most Americans were making holiday plans last month, the Marcor crew stepped into protective bio suits and entered the sealed basement parking garage beneath the abandoned former headquarters of such tabloid staples as the Star, the National Enquirer and Weekly World News.

Howard County has ordered millions of dollars of fire and public safety equipment that leaders say will help address safety and communication concerns in the event of a disaster. Many of the six vehicles will replace run-down ones, and a few offer technologies that have never been used in the county. Workers inside a new mobile communications hub will be able to view live footage from the department's helicopter for the first time, and the truck will be wired with the county's first mobile network that routes radio and cell phone communications over the Internet.

WASHINGTON - A powdery substance suspected to be the poison ricin was discovered yesterday in a Capitol Hill mailroom near the office of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, raising new fears of bioterrorism. Several tests found the white powder to be ricin, a potentially deadly toxin derived from castor beans, and additional tests were being conducted. At a late night Capitol Hill news conference, Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said the incident was being investigated as a crime. Frist, a physician who has written about bioterrorism, sought to reassure Capitol Hill staffers that all precautions were being taken.

Master firefighters Bill Pappas (above left) and Steven Bettis carry a dummy into a decontamination tent, while other firefighters (below) learn how to to build and install wooden braces for damaged buildings in a mock disaster drill at the former Bennigan's restaurant site in Columbia yesterday.

For the past decade, environmental engineer Jim Gebhardt and his boss, Paul Robert, have been Fort Meade's go-to guys in the sticky matter of cleaning up one of the nation's most contaminated military sites. To the Army brass, they were the civilians who could translate into plain English the migration of chlorinated solvents. To the civilians outside the base, they were the Army representatives who always told the often-ugly truth. To the regulators monitoring the cleanup, they were the shortest cut through red tape.

Even as the Army destroys more than 1,600 tons of mustard agent stockpiled at Aberdeen Proving Ground, it is poised to begin another multimillion-dollar cleanup, on land contaminated by radioactive medical and research waste. The site, near the banks of the Bush River on the Edgewood peninsula, was the East Coast collection point for Army radioactive medical and research waste in the 1950s and 1960s, say APG officials. Before that, it was home to the Toxic Gas Yard, until canisters of mustard agent and other dangerous chemical weapons were moved to a larger storage site on the peninsula early in World War II. The Army is spending millions every year to clean up the toxic legacy of APG, a premier research and testing site for the military.

Federal officials backed away yesterday from a plan to fumigate a Senate office building with chlorine dioxide gas to kill anthrax spores after outside experts raised questions about the decontamination technique. Instead, workers will clean the Hart Senate Office Building piecemeal using various disinfectants, including bleach and bacteria-killing foam as well as the gas. It was unclear whether the new approach would still allow 50 senators to return to their offices by Nov. 13, the goal under the previous plan.

Debra Henry, 44, got the bad news yesterday in an emergency surgical tent in downtown Baltimore. "I'm sorry, ma'am," said Lt. Col. Craig R. Ruder, an Air Force trauma surgeon. "You're going to lose your leg." Henry, an employee at Maryland Shock Trauma Center, took it well, considering she was perfectly healthy. "I'm loving it," she said with a giggle. "This is great." Henry was one of more than 200 volunteers who gathered at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore to play the very serious roles of victims in what was likely one of the largest disaster-training exercises ever held at a major hospital center.

West Friendship Elementary School will be closed for the remainder of the school year, which ends Friday, because of asbestos contamination, a Howard County schools spokeswoman said yesterday. Pupils will not have to make up the missed days because this is an emergency situation, spokeswoman Patti Caplan said. The school was shut down Monday after construction workers crushed asbestos floor tiles in the gym over the weekend, releasing the cancer-causing mineral into the air, where it can be dangerous if inhaled.