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CNN Live At Daybreak

Longworth Building Reopens Today

Aired November 05, 2001 - 08:17   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back at 17 minutes after the hour. On Capitol Hill lawmakers are being allowed back in the Longworth House office building at this hour. It has been 10 days since traces of anthrax were found in the offices of three congressmen.

Congressional correspondent Kate Snow is standing by not far from there this morning. Good morning Kate.

KATE SNOW, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning Paula, it's been two and a half weeks since this building has been opened. It's the building that's right over my right shoulder - I don't know if you can see this, it says "welcome back to Longworth." This is the flyer that they're handing out this morning as they reopen that building.

It reopened at 8:00 Eastern Time, just about 15 minutes ago and a lot of staff members very glad for that. They've been out of - displaced out of their offices for some time. Now just over a week ago, you may recall, traces of anthrax were found in that Longworth House office building, specifically in three particular offices - in the office of Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, Congressman John Baldacci of Maine and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana.

Those three offices will remain closed. They are sealed off, we're told, from the rest of the building. Authorities have not decided exactly how they'll decontaminate those three offices, but again, there was a small trace amount found in those offices, but we're told that it is perfectly safe for people to go into the rest of the building.

Now most of the anthrax on Capitol Hill has actually been found on the Senate side of the Capitol Complex. If you take a look at he map the Longworth Building is on the House side of the complex. The Hart Office Building is on the Senate side and that's in fact where Senator Tom Daschle's office is and you may recall that's where most of the anthrax contamination has been found.

Now they've been trying to deal with how to decontaminate that Hart Office Building. One week ago today the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency came out with a plan - a suggestive course of action, where they would use something called chlorine dioxide gas to clean up that building - to decontaminate the anthrax. This is a gas that's often used to disinfect water supplies for drinking water in Europe and the United States.

It was billed as the quickest, the safest, and the most effective way to clean up a large building. Yesterday according to the Capitol spokesman Dan Nichols, an EPA peer review by other scientists was finally completed. They had other scientists look over their plan of action for that Hart Office Building. The EPA expected to put out a statement on that and one official close to the report said that there is some concern about the size of the Hart Office Building.

It is one million cubic feet in size, Paula, and nothing like this has really ever been tried before, using chlorine dioxide for a project this large in scale and to clean up anthrax, something sort of new and they're hoping that they can get it started sometime this week.

Back to you Paula.

ZAHN: And what are the health concerns about the use of this chlorine gas?

SNOW: It's - they say it's perfectly safe for humans. It immediately within minutes breaks down into a form that's not hazardous to human health. One interesting note, it is somewhat hazardous apparently or there are some questions about what hazard poses to aquatic animals - to some of the fish that were in the building in some of the senator's offices are going to be removed before they use the gas.

But they say it shouldn't hurt anything else. They've tested - they actually took some papers and some things out of the offices and tested it to make sure it wouldn't decontaminate - I'm sorry, it wouldn't decompose any of those things and they found it to be perfectly safe on papers and other important items.

Paula.

ZAHN: All right Kate Snow, thanks so much.

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