Anthrax drill is met with relief and skepticism

It was, to be sure, an unusual sight for a Sunday morning, as the city was just shaking off cobwebs acquired the night before: postal carriers, blue sacks slung over their shoulders, clambering up stairs and depositing white cardboard boxes roughly the size of aspirin bottles.

The deliveries, made in the Sound End and West Roxbury, were the centerpiece of a drill designed by health and postal authorities to measure how swiftly life-saving medications could be delivered if terrorists seeded the air with anthrax.

If yesterday's experiment is an accurate reflection, antibiotic pills could be dispatched to 23,000 households in just under six hours - far faster than authorities anticipated.

One South End carrier finished her appointed rounds five hours ahead of schedule.

Residents greeted the drill with a blend of relief and skepticism.

Count Antonio Ortiz, 72, is among the comforted. Not long past dawn, he was walking his dog, Mama, and spied mailman Jonathan Edge striding down Massachusetts Avenue.

"I said, 'What are you doing so early on Sunday morning?' " Ortiz recalled later. So Edge explained his morning's mission.

"I hope God will be with us whatever happens," Ortiz said. "And I hope the mailman will be here to give us medicine."

The white box, emblazoned with the message "This is only a test," arrived at James Heroux's Shawmut Avenue home while he worshiped at church.

"I'm not worried about the terrorists," Heroux, 50, said.

"I'm worried about the 'oops' factor," he said, mentioning an incident in 2004 when three Boston University scientists were exposed to tularemia in their laboratory.

Heroux also said he wondered whether postal carriers would be amenable to dropping off pills in the event of a real crisis. "You're relying on a human being in a tense situation to respond in a heroic manner," he said. "That's a lot to rely upon."

The health authorities who spent nearly three years planning the Boston drill - as well as earlier experiments in Seattle and Philadelphia - had much the same the question as Heroux.

Dr. William Raub, science adviser to the US secretary of Health and Human Services, said that when he posed that concern to the postal workers' union he "got a lecture on citizenship" and a promise that carriers would make their rounds should catastrophe strike.

Edge, who knows where every crack, pothole, and secret lies in the South End after nearly two decades on the route, said it only made sense for the US Postal Service to be conscripted. "We know all the addresses, we know all the shortcuts," Edge said.

"The customer knows you, the customer trusts you," he said.

But just in case, Edge and the 30 other carriers in yesterday's drill were shadowed by Boston police officers.

The Postal Service, recognizing that medication would be coveted during an emergency, sought the police presence.

"In times of national crisis, people do panic," said Detective Arthur O'Connell, who accompanied Edge. "They want to be assured they're going to get their medicine."

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the arrival of rogue letters containing anthrax a month later, big cities have been engaged in campaigns to prepare for assaults involving biological agents. Antibiotics work quite well against most of those bacteria but typically have to be administered within 48 hours.

Cities would establish drug-dispensing centers, but because it would take time to get those sites running, health authorities became intrigued by the possibility of using mail carriers to deliver an initial course of antibiotics.

The federal government paid for yesterday's experiment, which cost under $100,000, US authorities said.

When the last box was delivered at 1:03 p.m., a chorus of cheers resounded in a command center established for the drill.

Postal authorities said carriers eclipsed their schedules, based on how long it typically takes to make their rounds, in part because it was Sunday, when there's less traffic.

"And they're delivering just one commodity," Postal Service spokesman Robert Cannon said. "They're not delivering mail, so they're not having to match names on mailboxes."

At buildings with narrow mail slots, the boxes were left on the stoop.

In Philadelphia, carriers skipped those residents and people complained.

"We wanted everyone to feel included," said John Jacob, acting director of Boston's Public Health Preparedness Office, "so that if this were a real emergency, residents could expect to receive the medication."

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's City & Region section about an anthrax bioterror drill misstated the type of bacterium that infected Boston University scientists in 2004. The bacterium was the one that causes tularemia.)