Prior to September 11th I was working as a structural engineer in the New York City Metro area. I had occasion to visit the Morgan facility (huge!) in Manhattan many times (small jobs) and I had occasion to be throughout the building in the coarse on this work. Anyway, I mention this as this is why i will never forget the goings on back then.
If you remember, virtually simultaneously, anthrax was discovered in both the Morgan facility and the Congressional office buildings mentioned above. The difference...??? Following the news reports... They removed and replaced the entire heating and ventilation duct system in the Congressional office, which took many-many months, they chased every speck of dust. Conversely, they closed a portion of the Morgan facility, washed down and it was back up running in 14 days -back to work slabs!
While I think the decontamination efforts you describe in the Morgan facility were probably rushed, the implication that DC employees fared any better is misleading.
From my own experience, for 2 days after the letter was opened in Daschle’s office, the Hart building hvac systems continued to pump air throughout the building. There were guys in hazmat suits on one side of a thin piece of yellow crime scene-like tape (I vaguely recall it being “Caution” tape from a construction site) and Senate staffers walking blithely through the halls on the other side of that tape. No effort was made for the first 3 days to insulate Daschle’s office or the mail distribution facilities.
Even after they eventually evacuated the Hart building and made us all get tested, authorities were negligently slow in realizing that the letter had contaminated several Washington USPS sites. Please recall that those who died in DC were postal workers, not Senators or aides.
In summation, there was failure from the top to the bottom on leadership in October 2001.