Disruptions to mail delivery appear to be minimal with exceptions at the facilities impacted by anthrax scares.
Mail moving though the Washington, DC, Processing and Distribution center at Brentwood Road and the Baltimore-Washington International Airport airmail facility will experience delays. The sites have been temporarily closed since Sunday for inspection for possible anthrax contamination. Another facility in Hamilton, NJ, was also impacted.
Incoming mail normally processed at the Washington facility, the major processing location that serves the Washington, DC area, is being diverted to suburban Maryland and southern Maryland facilities. Mail destined for the BWI facility has been moved to another location at the airport. Cleanup and decontamination efforts are expected to last up to a month.
"Things are moving," said Linda Carlisle, director of brand development at R.R. Donnelley Logistics, Willowbrook, IL.
Carlisle said the postal service has contingency plans in place and is well-equipped to handle problems as it does when a facility is affected by a major snowstorm, flood or other disaster. "They're ready to handle these sorts of things happening," she said.
However, mailers can expect deliveries to be delayed for about one day if the mail is moving through facilities heavily impacted by the anthrax scare, such as the Brentwood facility, she said. The Brentwood facility serves postal prefixes 200, 202, 203, 204, 205.
R.R. Donnelley manages 4 billion pounds of mail each year including 19 billion printed mail pieces and 130 million packages.
So far, what service disruptions there have been seem to be localized. "We have not heard anything from our members, and they are nationwide," said Eric Casey, director of marketing for the Alexandria, VA-based Mail and Fulfillment Services Association.
But a few member lettershops have had mailings postponed or cancelled by their customers as a result of the anthrax scare, Casey said. While he did not offer a specific number of mailings, he estimated that the total number of pieces might be several million.
Across several organizations, officials were resolute about keeping delivery on schedule. At a press conference on Monday, Vince Sombratto, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers vowed that the attacks would not succeed in "creating an environment where letter carriers will not do their job."
"We have a proud history of more than 200 years of delivery under all circumstances, as arduous and as difficult as they may be," Sombratto said.
"This is another one of those circumstances where we have to rise to the occasion."
Tom Ridge, director of the Office of Homeland Security, said in a press conference, that numerous agencies were doing "everything we can to enhance whatever measures we have out there to protect postal workers and to make sure that we work with them to get the mail through as quickly and as efficiently as possible."
While officials are resolute that the mail will go through, some operational changes are already being evaluated. Air hoses are being reconsidered. Air hoses, which are used to clean postal processing equipment, may have contributed to the airborne dissemination of anthrax spores at the Brentwood postal facility.
Jack Potter, the Postmaster General, said that USPS procurement agents were investigating sanitizing equipment that would rely on ultraviolet light, as well as those that vacuum equipment, instead to blowing air through it.
In another development, after the U.S. Postal Service confirmed that two workers at its Brentwood distribution facility had contracted anthrax, the Mail and Fulfillment Services Association suggested that some members' employees should be tested for the disease.
A broadcast fax that went out to 253 of the Washington, DC-area and Baltimore-area members urged members to have employees tested for the disease who had been in contact with either the Brentwood Road General Mail Facility or the air mail facility at BWI International airport within the past two weeks.
Two anthrax-infected postal workers from the Brentwood facility have died.
Earlier, the lettershop trade group in Alexandria, VA had urged its members not to have employees use white talcum powder when processing mail on lettershop machines. "The talcum powder helps workers deal with the friction caused by the machines but obviously creates problems," said Casey. He did not recommend suitable substitutes for the talcum powder.
