Fear The
spate of local white-powder scares began Oct. 12, when a 49-year-old
City of Newburgh man called police claiming he had inhaled anthrax.
The man had opened a suspicious package, he said. That package was
a bill from Time-Life Books.Since that day, hundreds of scares have been called in to police and emergency services. Some are serious. In the hamlet of Pine Bush, one scare resulted in the first federal charges involving an anthrax hoax. The local postal service has been on the frontlines since the first anthrax case in Florida. At least twice during October, white powder was discovered in the U.S. Postal Mid-Hudson Processing and Distributing Center outside of Stewart Airport.  However,
the legitimacy of most of the scares is questionable. In the weeks
following Oct. 12, it became clear that local hazmat teams and other
emergency services were being taxed to their limit.Suspected chalk dust caused alarm at South Junior High School in Newburgh. An American Airlines flight was evacuated at Stewart for what may have been a crushed breath mint. Town of Newburgh Police responded to a scare at the Mid-Valley Mall involving fallen dust from frosted holiday drinking glasses. The night before that scare, town officers responded to a dozen anthrax calls, most involving expected letters that arrived partially opened. Chief Charles Kehoe expressed concern over the ability of overtaxed volunteers to respond to real emergencies in the wake of all the scare activity. "It appears people are feeding off of their own fear," he said. Jason Doce © 2001 Orange County Publications, a division of Ottaway Newspapers Inc., all rights reserved. |