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Rocky Mountain News
*****
Power failure hits CDC germ lab
Outage disables freezers, cuts off security system
By Jim Erickson, Rocky Mountain News
October 13, 2005
A power failure knocked out the security system at a
federal germ lab in Fort Collins for 13 hours Monday and
disabled freezers housing thousands of vials of plague and
other potential bioweapons.
A backup generator kicked on when the power failed.
But an electrical short prevented the backup power from
being routed through the building, said Colorado State
University spokesman Brad Bohlander.
As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
laboratory was without power for 13 hours, beginning at
3:07 p.m. Monday, Bohlander said. CSU owns the building and
leases it to the government.No germ collections were
damaged, the public was not endangered, and no security
breach occurred, said CDC spokeswoman Jennifer Morcone.
The Fort Collins CDC lab, which opened in 1967, is known as
the Division of Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases.
It houses freeze-dried samples of about 1,000 plague
strains, along with smaller collections of two other
potential bioweapons, tularemia and Venezuelan equine
encephalitis.
West Nile virus and the microbes that cause Lyme disease
and yellow fever also are stored at the lab, which is west
of downtown Fort Collins on Colorado State's Foothills
Campus.
A new $80 million CDC lab is being built adjacent to the
aging facility. It is scheduled for completion next year.
Sen. Wayne Allard and other members of the Colorado
congressional delegation pushed hard to get funding for the
new lab. In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks and the anthrax-letter incidents that followed,
Allard stressed the current lab's security shortcomings.
In a February 2002 letter to the Health and Human Services
secretary, Allard said the lab's run-down state constitutes
a "bioterrorism security breach."
On Wednesday afternoon, two members of Allard's staff
visited the lab for a briefing about Monday's power
failure. An incident report is being prepared.
"The senator will take a look at that report, and if there
are concerns, he'll address them," said Carolyn Williams,
Allard's Colorado press secretary.
"But what we've heard so far is that things were handled
very well," she said.
Lab employees were off for the Columbus Day holiday when
Monday's power outage occurred. The problem was traced to
water that leaked into the room that houses the lab's main
electrical system, causing a short that knocked out power,
Bohlander said.
Extra security guards were posted during the blackout,
which disabled the lab's video surveillance system and the
electronic card keys that control access to restricted
areas, Morcone said.
Portable generators provided temporary power to the main
germ freezers. Dry ice was used in smaller freezers,
Bohlander said.
Five CDC employees - including engineers and a security
specialist - flew from agency headquarters in Atlanta and
worked with the Colorado State team.
In October 2001, investigators from the Office of the
Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human
Services visited the Fort Collins lab and found several
security deficiencies.
A short time later, a new perimeter fence went up,
around-the-clock guard patrols were added, and access to
the biological agents in the lab's freezers was tightened.
Security cameras linking the Fort Collins lab to Atlanta
were installed, along with a new computerized card-key
system.
*****
Write to:
Science Reporter, Jim Erickson:
EricksonJ@rockymountainnews.com
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