More delays in opening Fort Detrick BioLab
system shutdown, which would have allowed people to leave labs but not enter them.
No one would be endangered if this happened again, Fitch said, but if a researcher needed to enter a lab in a timely manner, research could be compromised. The problem could be solved by finding a new location for the outdoor sensor.
Workers also need to patch a few leaks in the roof from the snowstorm, but “those kinds of tasks won’t slow us down,” he said.
Because BNBI already had a list of changes needed to be made, Fitch decided to install more safety measures. He wants more valve labels, since the building’s piping is so complicated. He also wants to draw out the floor plan on the space above each ceiling — a space tall enough to walk through — making it easier for repair crews to understand where they are and what each valve might affect in the floor below.
Lastly, Fitch said he wanted to add air pressure monitors to space above each ceiling, ensuring that no contaminated air was leaking out of the labs. The monitoring system would be the same as what is installed in the hallways.
Given all the fixes that need to be made and the inspections that will follow, Fitch told Eckstein he estimated it would be at least eighteen months until the building is fully operational. But some research teams may move in two or three weeks, doing preliminary work and learning more about the building. They will not use any infectious viruses or bacteria, but setting up the labs and working with other materials should familiarize them with the building and alert them to any remaining flaws.
A DNA sequencing team and an electron microscope team that work in biosafety level 2 labs, as well as a virology team that work in level 4 labs, will be the first to move in.
“We have a brand-new building, and while we have decades of experience running a containment lab, no one has ever run the NBACC building,” Fitch said. “So you look at that and say, ‘Well, how do I reduce the risk?’ The first thing you do is run it doing other things that matter, but that aren’t as risky, like working with E. coli, working with vaccine strains, working with pathogens that everyone has vaccines for.”
Administrators cannot move in yet either because there are a few bugs to be worked out of the air conditioning, Internet and other systems, Fitch said. He said he hoped to be in the building within a few weeks. The rest of the staff will move in shifts, so that everyone would lose only about half a day of work during the transition.
