Posted on 10/19/2001 10:14:55 AM PDT by callisto
The woman served 250 to 300 addresses in Ewing Township, mostly homes, but also some apartment buildings and a few businesses, fellow letter carrier Jim Bittenbender said.
The woman, whom authorities have not identified, does not pick up mail from public boxes, he said, indicating any outgoing mail she received would likely have come from those addresses or from someone personally.
"That would obviously be among the many avenues we would pursue," said Sandra Carroll, an FBI spokeswoman in Newark.
Bittenbender said his colleague didn't remember handling anything unusual.
"We pick up thousands of letters from this office. One letter carrier may pick up hundreds. It's something you just don't remember," he said Friday.
He and the infected woman work at the small West Trenton post office in Ewing, one of 46 central New Jersey stations that feed into a regional distribution facility in Hamilton.
A male worker who serviced mail-sorting machines at the Hamilton office was also being tested for exposure. Results were expected Friday. Postal Inspector Tony Esposito said officials were "almost certain" he has anthrax.
Authorities confirmed the woman's skin anthrax diagnosis on Thursday.
The two workers were being treated by personal physicians and taking antibiotics, officials said. The female employee had also been treated at a local hospital and released, health officials said.
"Both are doing well," Acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco said.
A third postal employee - a Levittown, Pa., man who sorts and loads mail at the regional center - developed a skin rash and was tested for anthrax exposure or infection.
Bucks County Health Commissioner Dr. Louis Polk said the 35-year-old man was being treated for a skin rash at a hospital. His test results were also expected Friday.
A Sept. 18 letter tainted with anthrax was postmarked from Trenton and mailed to Brokaw. Another contaminated letter from Trenton, mailed to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle in Washington, was postmarked Oct. 9, after the woman was infected.
Bar codes on one of the tainted letters from Trenton indicated that the infected woman probably handled the envelope, sources said. Earlier this week, officials said the letter carrier and maintenance worker were working on days when the tainted mail would have been processed.
Postal officials examined the prestamped envelopes and video surveillance tapes for clues as to the source of the letters.
Parts of the Hamilton office were sealed Thursday, and it and the West Trenton facility were closed to the public Friday. Officials said first-class mail, which is machine sorted, would be delivered out of the West Trenton office.
Officials with the federal Centers for Disease Control were in New Jersey on Friday to decide whether to give more tests to other postal employees.
Carroll also said Friday that the FBI is going to test items removed last month from the apartment of two Jersey City detainees for anthrax after The Wall Street Journal reported that the vacant apartment currently contains articles about bioterrorism.
The newspaper reported on Thursday that the unlocked apartment of Mohammed Jaweed Azmath and Ayub Ali Khan contained a 1995 article on sarin nerve gas and a magazine article on the National Center for Infectious Diseases. Azmath and Khan have been detained since they were picked up in Texas on an Amtrak train the day after the Sept. 11 terrorism, carrying about $5,000 and box-cutting knives similar to those used by the hijackers.
Carroll said the FBI has not returned to that apartment since a search Sept. 15 and has no immediate reason to suspect a connection between the detainees and bioterrorism.
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AP-ES-10-19-01 1233EDT
</FONNow I'm not saying that there are no inefficiencies at the USPS, of course. ;-)
The difference is that USPS hits virtually every address every day. At the low end of the quoted range (250 stops), that's 31.25 per hour or a bit less than two minutes per stop on a eight hour shift, not including driving time. If most of those are single family houses, that's probably a pretty good clip, especially when you figure in driving time and walking door to door. I'm willing to bet FedEx and UPS drivers don't handle 30 stops an hour since they're going to somewhat scattered addresses.
I'm still all for privatizing the post office, but that's another story.
o They may have already left the area or the country and are not worried about it.
o They had no idea g-men could trace the anthrax back to their place using swab tests
o They fooled the police by using a ficticious return address [Ooooh, Mohammed. They cannot find us! I made up a fake name of a school!]
These guys may replace the Czech brothers on SNL.
Right on the money
I'm sure that profiling (Arab &/or student) is being used on those 300 addresses.
Given that you feel the "FBI is such a waste of time," what do you propose to do to catch these terrorists?
Abd what makes you presume it's solely the FBI investigating? The Postal Inspectors are also working these cases. And probably along with other law enforcement agencies, are now going door to door, checking out each address and each mailbox (and her route did not include any dropoff boxes). Even if the perps have skedaddled, there may well be traces of anthrax in the resident's mailbox--not only endangering the resident but the mail carrier. And they might even find a fingerprint or two which could ID the perps.
But hey, the FBI is such a waste of time....so I want to know, and with some detail and specificity, how you are going to track down these terrorists?
My wife's four afternoon dental hygienist appointments at her office in West Trenton all canceld. However the golf course was busy. It's a beautiful day, for golf, for playing hookey.
Looks like we might have a dumb terrorist here. If I wanted to make sure nothing could be traced to me I sure wouldn't depend on the mail carrier to pick it up.
It should only be a matter now of swabbing 300 mailboxes for either anthrax or cleaning fluid residue.
Would be interesting to know how serving 250 to 300 addresses compares in terms of efficiency to FedEx Ground or UPS.It would. I suspect that when those services begin to deliver at least one item daily to nearly every single address in their routes, they will run into some logistical problems. I get several items a day by USPS delivery (envelopes full of junk, mostly), and go weeks and weeks without receiving a FedEx Air, Ground or UPS delivery. I see the FedEx and UPS trucks go down my street every day, though. If they had to stop at every single address, I think they'd need to change their delivery routes a lot.
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