Governor orders all state mail to be held

Monday, Oct. 15, 2001 | 10:33 a.m.

The anthrax scare in Reno prompted Gov. Kenny Guinn to order state mail across Nevada held this morning until employees receive training on how to handle suspicious-looking envelopes and packages.

"We've asked everybody to hold off opening or delivering mail to the various offices until we've had a chance to go through this process," Guinn said. "These are precautionary procedures. It won't take long for us to do this."

Similar training, primarily on how to spot and handle anthrax, is being given at the main U.S. post office at Paradise and Sunset roads, officials said. Local mail is being delivered on schedule.

About 74 postal workers sorting the mail, more than twice as many as last week, signed out masks this morning to protect themselves, officials said.

This comes as officials at the Emergency Operations Center in Carson City said they have turned over about three dozen more suspicious envelopes picked up from people in Northern Nevada to the state health lab in Reno for anthrax testing.

Guinn said Nevada health officials expected to receive test results this morning from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on an envelope found to have contained anthrax that was sent to the Microsoft offices in Reno.

The CDC was testing the envelope to see if it was the deadly inhaled strain of anthrax or a harmless strain used in vaccines.

Health officials said four of six people exposed to the letter don't have the inhalation form of the bacteria, and preliminary tests of the other two also are negative.

Final results of tests of the nasal swab samples taken from the six were expected today.

"Given the individual test results we have received so far, and physical condition and location of the letter, this appears to be a very, very low-risk situation," Washoe District Health Officer Barbara Hunt said.

Guinn said emergency management officials have a "long list of things" to go over with mail room employees across the state before the mail can be delivered today.

Some employees, he said, will be given the option of wearing gloves.

The Emergency Operations Center, Guinn said, has been flooded with calls from people with questions about suspicious letters they've received.

Gary Derks, a duty officer at the center, said a dozen health officials and members of law enforcement manned telephones around the clock this past weekend as a result of the stepped-up publicity over anthrax scares across the country.

He said hundreds of calls were received, and authorities picked up as many as three dozen letters in Reno and other cities in Northern Nevada for further testing. No letters were picked up in Las Vegas, he said.

So far there have been no other confirmed cases of anthrax in Nevada, officials said.

The FBI, which is investigating the Microsoft case, is working closely with officials at the Emergency Operations Center and has been informed of the additional letters sent for anthrax testing.

"We have initiated an investigation and our job is to find out the source and the intent behind the anthrax," Las Vegas FBI spokesman Daron Borst said this morning.

Borst said the FBI is trying to determine whether the Microsoft anthrax case is linked to those in New York and Florida and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Microsoft spokesman Dan Leach told the Reno Gazette-Journal over the weekend that his company was relieved that tests on Microsoft employees have come back negative.

"The executives in our company are taking this very, very seriously," Leach said. "There's nothing more important than the security of our employees."

Leach said the letter originated from Microsoft Licensing Inc. in Reno and was sent with a check to a vendor in Malaysia. The letter came back to the office with the uncashed check and five pornographic photos clipped from magazines.