Tampabay: Anthrax scare slow to reach officials

ST. PETERSBURG -- The county's top emergency management official was at his weekend home in Brooksville. The health department director was on vacation. The fire chief didn't find out until the next day.

When the anthrax scare hit St. Petersburg on Friday afternoon, top officials charged with public safety were largely out of the loop. And some of them stayed there for a while.

"I saw it on CNN," said David Bilodeau, Pinellas emergency management director. "I was at my little place in Brooksville. I said, "Oh no. What's next?' "

On Monday, St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Baker and police Chief Mack Vines defended their handling of the anthrax scare, which lasted about 24 hours and drew St. Petersburg briefly into the national spotlight. Theirs was a low-key approach: no city press conferences like New York Mayor Rudolph Guiliani holds to update the public.

"I think people have to be very cautious about how they respond to some of the hype," said First Deputy Mayor Tish Elston. "There's a balance between being vigilant and overreacting, and I think we try to strike that balance."

The city's moment in the burgeoning anthrax crisis began shortly before 5 p.m. Friday, when the FBI contacted the St. Petersburg Police Department with some startling news. Two letters containing white powder sent to NBC News and the New York Times carried St. Petersburg postmarks. A similar letter had been opened by St. Petersburg Times columnist Howard Troxler earlier in the week.

As the situation developed Friday, most local public officials were getting their information from television news. Postal officials held a news conference at the St. Petersburg post office after 10 p.m. Friday to confirm that an investigation was under way.

Although the scare prompted a busy weekend -- 300 calls related to anthrax scares in Pinellas County were fielded by 911 operators, officials said -- the powder in the three letters ultimately proved harmless. Bilodeau and other local officials emphasized Monday that even though they were not in command, they had left able deputies in charge.

"The reason they didn't let me know Friday night is they were able to handle it," said James Callahan, the fire chief since 1996, who didn't learn of the situation until Saturday. "The operations chief got there and found out there was nothing to it."

Police Chief Mack Vines learned of the local connection just after 5 p.m. Friday, while he was on the phone with a reporter. His investigators had just heard about the St. Petersburg postmarks from the FBI and were about to tell him, he said.

He said he assigned two homicide investigators, Bill Schorn and Mark Deasaro, to handle the case. Then he called City Administrator Tish Elston and Mayor Rick Baker.

Vines acknowledged it was his department's responsibility to inform other agencies and department heads about the threat. But he said he didn't think it was necessary.

"Nothing occurred in this city," Vines said during an interview at City Hall Monday afternoon. "It happened in New York."

"There was no known health issue here," added Elston, "so there was nothing to report. . . . This basically became a followup investigation."

When the St. Petersburg connection surfaced, health department director John Heilman was on annual leave dealing with family matters out of town, said Patricia Ryder, a medical epidemiologist with the health department. Ryder said she found out about the St. Petersburg connection when she was watching television news Friday evening.

"We didn't have any notification," she said.

The first official communication to her came in the form of a phone call from St. Petersburg's central postal processing facility about 10 or 11 p.m. Friday, she said. Ryder said she followed protocol and told the person to call 911, which then put out a hazardous materials team call.

In the aftermath of the weekend's events, Vines' department produced a list of procedures for handling mail sent around the city.

Many of the mail handlers at the city's mail processing facility have asked for and received plastic gloves, said Ronald Whitaker Sr., the city's security chief. Coincidentally, postal inspector Andrew Balkin had visited the city Friday morning to offer mail handling training to about 35 employees.

But even before this weekend, city officials were looking at new security precautions because of the terrorist attacks in New York.

Visitors must now check in at City Hall and the Municipal Services Building rather than roaming freely. The city is also considering using a new machine to read employee badges and possibly adding metal detectors at building entrances.

"We don't want to go into a panic mode, which we are not," said Baker. "But we want to be able to continue to conduct business, and we want to take precautions that are important to take."

Baker said he felt the city had handled the potential crisis well, and he did not want to second-guess Vines' decision not to call other agencies.

"Well, that would have been up to Mack to make the determination as to whether there was a need to bring in the Fire Department at the time he heard it," Baker said. "He obviously made a determination there wasn't. I'm not sure why one would question that."

Other agency officials said they would have liked to have known.

"It certainly wouldn't have hurt, but it wouldn't have modified the response any," said Gary Vickers, senior coordinator at Pinellas emergency management.

But not everyone was pleased.

City Council member Virginia Littrell said she was extremely upset that city officials failed to notify her of a potential anthrax threat at the post office in her district. She learned about it while watching ABC's Dateline Friday night.

"I was really angry at hearing it on Dateline," Littrell said. "I have every confidence in their decisionmaking ability, but it would have been nice if council members had been in the information loop. That would have been appropriate."

Even as authorities discussed how they handled the situation, the investigation into who might be responsible for the three St. Petersburg letters continued. FBI agents interviewed Troxler on Saturday and talked to other Times' staffers on Monday.

Linda Walker, a U.S. postal inspector based in Tampa, said she thought it "highly likely" the person or people responsible for the hoax letters would be apprehended.

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