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Area takes alert in stride
By
Steve Urbon, Standard-Times senior correspondent
NAOMI K.
PAPPAS/Standard-Times special
Yolanda Butler, an
employee at Bananas in East Wareham, assembles a gas mask, an item
now sought after at the military surplus store.
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 In the
depths of the Cold War, the civil defense instructions were to "duck and
cover" when people saw the flash of a nuclear explosion.
Now in the
war against terrorism, it's "duct tape and cover with plastic," an
official U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggestion that has sent
many Americans scrambling to the hardware store for a bit of home(land)
security against biological and chemical weapons.
The
government, as part of its "Orange Alert," says that in the event of a
terrorist attack, people should turn off all ventilation, go to a safe
room and seal it with the tape and plastic sheets. If the room has 10
square feet of floor space per person, it should provide enough air for up
to five hours, the government says.
In the eyes
of UMass Dartmouth botulism researcher Dr. Bal Ram Singh, "this is exactly
what the intention of a terrorist is" -- to keep a population nervous and
defensive.
Dr. Singh is
not especially concerned about the threat of bioterrorism or chemical
weapons being unleashed in the United States, much less this corner of it.
But
if people want to believe that they can be made safe by sealing off a room
with duct tape and sheets of plastic, he said, there is no harm in it,
even if it won't really do very much good.
"I think if
it helps people to feel a little safer, it doesn't hurt. But I don't think
anything of that nature is coming, in my assessment," he said.
By that he
meant an aerosol attack, which would be all that the plastic-guarded room
might protect against. "To put the aerosol, you would really need a huge
amount of it and a method to deliver it," Dr. Singh
said. "It would be a
huge undertaking."
Although
even a small vial of certain materials "can do havoc, it would have to be
in a proper delivery system, and the United States is not a banana country
where you can just walk in and do what you want to do."
Dr. Singh
suggested that we would be more secure if public safety authorities became
prepared to assess and deal with "commonly known threats" -- anthrax,
botulism and certain viruses. Testing and monitoring ought to be done, he
suggested.
But buying
hard hats to protect against falling buildings, as some people are doing
in cities, is not going to help very much, he said.
Taping up a
room is not going to be of much use when the air runs out, he said. "If
you're going to breathe, you need the air. I think people are going too
far with this."
Most
customers interviewed at Home Depot in Dartmouth felt likewise.
"If I lived
in the city, then maybe, but I'm not in the city so I'm not worried about
it. I use duct tape to keep the wind out of my house," said Betsey Lamont
of Westport Point.
Jeannie
Charest of Fall River, shopping with her husband, Danny, and 3-year-old
daughter Cheyenne, said, "We weatherized all of our windows, so it's
already done, and we have two freezers, so we always have food, so this is
no big deal for us."
 Russell
Tetreault of Fairhaven was blunt: "I am absolutely not concerned. I think
this is completely ridiculous."
Peter Frey
of Rochester was philosophical: "I am not concerned, because God's in
control. When your number is up, your number is up, no matter when you're
going to die."
Gus Mortiana
of Fall River wasn't buying the duct tape defense. "If something did
happen, I don't think that duct tape is going to protect me," he said.
Tape and plastic are not the only safeguards around. The New Bedford Fire
Department last week took delivery of a three-section decontamination
shower tent.
Stored in a
trailer to be towed to the emergency room or to a disaster site, it is
essentially a car wash for humans. People enter one of three interior
corridors, remove their clothing, and pass through repeated showers of
Ivory soap, said Capt. Stephen Chmiel.
Capt.
Chmiel, who is the city's representative on the state's hazardous
materials response team, said 72 of the $64,000 units have been
distributed to every community where an emergency room is located. A
federal grant paid for them.
"Taking
one's clothing off will rid you of 90 percent of contamination," he said.
"The shower can take care of other things, shampooing it out of hair, face
and eyes. It will get people as clean as possible. It's gross
decontamination, just to get off the heavy contaminants."
The
45-foot-long high-tech tent, complete with plumbing and heating and
divided into corridors for privacy, can be set up in just over 10 minutes,
he said. Training will begin next week in tandem with St. Luke's Hospital
after being postponed because of the deep cold.
He said the
department has also practiced another decontamination technique in which
fire trucks are used to create a huge outdoor shower. The drawbacks are
that, unlike the decontamination tent, the runoff is not collected and the
technique is not suitable for cold weather.
Civil rights
activists in some cases have objected to people being rounded up, stripped
and showered against their will. But Capt. Chmiel said local health
authorities have "certain powers to quarantine people." And in the case of
the decontamination tent, separate areas for men and women assure a
measure of privacy.
Capt. Chmiel
added that the city has acquired a new radiation detector, and has quick
access to a handful of biological and chemical monitors distributed to
some towns, including Dartmouth, by Bristol County Sheriff Thomas M.
Hodgson.
The state,
meanwhile, maintains its own more sophisticated radiation and bioweapons
monitors, which can be deployed immediately as he and his hazmat
colleagues are called up.
Some people
are not waiting that long, however.
Many of them
are customers of John Fine, owner of Bananas Inc. an Army/Navy surplus
store in East Wareham.
"A lot of
people in the last few days have been buying gas masks and survival suits.
People are calling from all over the country. The wholesalers are running
out of gas masks and have been calling us for more," he said.
In past
week, he said, he has sold 100 gas masks for $29.99, while Russian ones go
for $19.99. Two dozen survival suits, made of rubberized plastic with
elastic around the legs and arms, ran out quickly at $10 each.
"We're
telling people that you might be wasting your time, we think that nothing
may happen."
"Before
9/11," he said, "we only sold gas masks around Halloween, but afterward we
had a big rush and that died a few months later. But for the past few
days, the demand has started up again. We're getting calls from people all
over the country."
Dick Post of
Onset is buying gas masks for his parents.
"They take
lots of trips into New York and they would feel better if I got them some
gas masks," he said.
This story appeared on Page A1 of The
Standard-Times on February 14, 2003.
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