BOCA RATON -- The first steps to clean up anthrax at the former American Media Inc. building started Saturday, as crews went inside the building for the first time in two years.
Crews from Bio-ONE spent the day setting up decontamination areas in the basement of the building and preparing for more-involved scouting trips on other floors today and continuing into the week. More than a dozen people made trips in and out of the building during the preliminary survey, spending about an hour each inside then coming out for decontamination and checks of their vital signs, said Sandra Schuh, a director with Sabre Technical Services.
Sabre is one-half of Bio-ONE, a new company created with former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's security consulting firm. Bio-ONE will make its headquarters at the building once the cleanup is complete.
Most of Saturday's work was confined to the three-story building's basement, Schuh said.
"Things will be examined much more thoroughly [in future visits]," Schuh said.
Once the set-up work is complete, teams will focus on shredding documents and destroying files and computer hard drives, as well as using disposable cameras to take pictures of equipment, furniture and other fixtures left behind inside the building when AMI employees were forced to evacuate in October 2001.
The former headquarters of the National Enquirer, Star and Weekly World News tabloids were contaminated with the deadly bacteria after someone mailed an anthrax-laced letter to the building on Broken Sound Boulevard, in the Arvida Park of Commerce. Tabloid photo editor Bob Stevens died Oct. 5, 2001, after inhaling anthrax spores from the contaminated envelope.
The building has been under quarantine by the Palm Beach County Health Department since Oct. 7, 2001, and the former AMI headquarters is the last building in the United States still contaminated with anthrax.
Other buildings, including the Hart Senate office building and the Brentwood postal center in Washington, D.C., have been cleaned and reopened. Sabre handled cleanups at those buildings, as well as at a contaminated center in New Jersey.
