Workers began the cleanup on Sunday of a Florida building contaminated by anthrax in a series of incidents that rattled the United States shortly after the Sept 11, 2001 airliner attacks on New York and Washington. Gas pumped into the Boca Raton building that once served as headquarters for supermarket tabloid publisher American Media Inc. was expected to rid it of deadly anthrax spores, which killed a photo editor there and prompted a biological warfare scare nearly three years ago. "It's started," a Boca Raton police dispatcher said of the cleanup.
Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the AMI building, was the first of five people to die as a result of anthrax attacks in Florida, New York and the Washington area. Tainted letters were sent to media outlets and to government officials. The three-story AMI building, which housed the National Enquirer and other tabloids, was quarantined in Oct. 2001 and was sold to developer David Rustine for $40,000 in April 2003. In January, Rustine picked Bio-ONE, a partnership between Giuliani Partners, a consulting company headed by former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, and Sabre Technical Services, to cleanse the building using chlorine dioxide gas. Bio-ONE was expected to use the building as its headquarters when the quarantine is lifted. |