Officials tour postal facility

Two members of Congress, postal authorities, labor union leaders, health officials and construction repairmen appeared confident yesterday that they were not poisoned after touring the Brentwood Postal Facility — renamed the Curseen-Morris Mail Processing and Distribution Center.

“I’m confident I’m safe,” D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton said. “We’re certainly not going to condemn this building. We’re not going to let it become a monument to anthrax terrorism.”

The 633,000-square-foot Brentwood facility in Northeast, where 2,500 employees worked seven days and nights a week, was closed Oct. 21, 2001, after two employees were infected by anthrax-laced mail.

The employees, Joseph Curseen Jr., 47, of Clinton, and Thomas Morris Jr., 55, of Suitland, died, and the Brentwood facility was closed for decontamination and renovation. The building was renamed in their honor.

“If it’s not safe, we’ll be the guinea pigs,” said U.S. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III, Virginia Republican. “As members of Congress, we wouldn’t ask our employees to go anywhere it’s dangerous. I believe it is safe.”

Postal administrators are expected to return to their jobs in the Curseen-Morris mail center by Dec. 21. Other employees, who are willing to return, will resume their positions in early January, officials said yesterday.

About 50 employees have expressed an unwillingness to return and have been assigned to other buildings, and “several employees retired,” spokesman Bob Anderson said.

Several employees had complained that postal authorities withheld anthrax warnings, and as a result, several employees became sick. One female employee said transfer employees would be penalized by losing their seniority.

“Her statement is inaccurate,” said William Burrus, president of American Postal Workers Union. However, “there is a lingering resentment in some employees,” he said.

Most employees are clerks, who will retain seniority. Only drivers and maintenance employees lose seniority if transferred to another facility. All postal employees retain other benefits, including sick leave and health insurance, he said.

“I’m not afraid. I felt strongly about coming back in here,” said Clyde Howard, a postal machines mechanic testing the distribution belts beneath hundreds of fake letters yesterday.

Nearby was a khaki-colored one-foot square box, called a dry filter unit. It is one of five units in the building since May that constantly test the air for contaminants such as anthrax, said Thomas G. Day, postal engineering vice president.

About $100 million is being spent for a more sophisticated bio-technological system to be installed in all U.S. post offices during January, Mr. Day said.

Large plastic sheets covered new escalators in the building at 900 Brentwood Drive NE, where workmen were drilling on new door frames, and carpet was being laid on some floors in preparation for the reopening.

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