Anthrax fumigation of US Senate offices complete
( 2001-12-31 16:40 ) (7 )

Clean-up teams on Monday concluded the fumigation of an anthrax-contaminated US Senate office building, but it will be several days before authorities know whether the operation succeeded in ridding the facility of all traces of the potentially deadly bacterium.

Bonnie Piper, a spokeswoman for the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said the fumigation was completed on Monday. It started on Friday at 17:30 EST (2230 GMT).

The Hart Building, the Capitol Hill base of half of the 100 US senators, has been shut since shortly after a letter containing anthrax spores was opened on Oct. 15 in the offices of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, a South Dakota Democrat.

The anthrax-tainted letter mailed to the Senate majority leader's office was one of a number of such letters sent to government and media targets nationwide following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.

Five people died and 13 have been infected with anthrax since the beginning of October, but none of them were infected on Capitol Hill.

"We had a very effective fumigation effort over the weekend. I'm told that, in large measure, it was remediated," Daschle said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I think that there is a reasonable possibility that we'll see that the building opens sometime in the early part of next month."

Piper, the EPA spokeswoman, said now that the fumigation is completed, additional steps will be taken to ensure that the building is safe before senators and their staff are allowed to return.

The EPA clean-up team began pumping poisonous chlorine dioxide gas through the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system (HVAC) of the southeast quadrant of the Hart building on Friday in an effort to rid the facility of anthrax once and for all.

A fumigation of Daschle's office on Dec. 1 killed all but trace amounts of the anthrax bacterium. But the first attempts to clean up a contaminated portion of the HVAC system were suspended on Dec. 17 after technical hitches arose.