BergerWorld: 2nd Quarter 2004

In October of 2001, four anonymous letters containing the infectious bacteria, anthrax, appeared in mailboxes along the East Coast. As they traveled through the mail, they contaminated United States Postal Service (USPS) facilities around the region, infecting more than 22 people and killing five. Following the attack, the Federal Government and the USPS found hazardous anthrax spores in several mail facilities, including the Morgan, NY and the Trenton, NJ Processing & Distribution Centers (P&DCs).

To expedite the cleanup at the Morgan facility, the USPS called on the Berger Group to oversee the decontamination contractor and provide technical, regulatory and legal support to postal officials. Contamination was discovered in several of Morgan's massive sorting machines, and Berger assisted the USPS in developing the decontamination methodologies for the cleanup of the machines and the surrounding area. Following the decontamination, the Team provided clearance sampling to ensure the facility was safe to reoccupy.

Throughout the project, Berger worked closely with public health and environmental agencies, private consultants and academic experts to provide the USPS with the most confident and capable team available to safely and successfully perform the first large-scale public anthrax decontamination effort in the United States.

Berger's assistance in the successful cleanup at the Morgan P&DC allowed New York's largest mail processing facility to quickly resume full operation and earned the Team a commendation from the USPS and the Environmental Protection Agency. As a result of this success, Berger was also selected to support the decontamination effort conducted at the Trenton P&DC.

3he Trenton P&DC was at the epicenter of the anthrax attacks, and the massive center was forced to shut down. The closure of one of central New Jersey's largest mail processing center forced the Postal Service to reassign mail processing to other facilities.

Based on the Team's experience at the Morgan P&DC, Berger supported the USPS's supervision of the decontamination efforts, including the construction and operation of the chemical generation plant and air pollution control systems and the actual fumigation of the building with chlorine dioxide gas. Following the fumigation, the Team provided independent oversight of the extensive sampling efforts required by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and an Environmental Clearance Committee of experts to judge the success of the decontamination. Once the process was finished, all reviewers certified the facility was safe for contractors and employees to work, leading the way to the refurbishment of and reopening this critical mail processing facility.