Spotlight on…

Carol Shearer and the Building 470 Team

Spotlight Archive

Ask someone at NCI-Frederick where Building 470 is located, and you may get a puzzled look. Ask anyone where the “anthrax tower” is, however, and you will quickly be pointed in the right direction. You may also be treated to a story or two about the infamous “tower.” Nickname and folk tales aside, 470, once a bioweapons research facility for Bacillus anthracis (the bacterium that causes anthrax), is now a deteriorating, structurally unsound 50-year-old building that must be taken down; and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—which is overseeing the dismantlement process—has made safety paramount on this project. So, who is in charge of the Building 470 Dismantlement Project and how exactly will ‘the tower’ be dismantled?

Project Manager Carol Shearer, a soft-spoken, petite woman with a calm, reassuring manner, is extremely well qualified to lead this effort, which requires both a diverse skill set and extensive biosafety/biosecurity experience.

A Unique Profession
Ms. Shearer is both an electrical engineer and a registered nurse, an unusual combination. After 10 years of nursing, she realized she wanted more. She says, “I woke up one morning and decided I could be an engineer. I talked to some universities and they said, ‘Sure, you can do that.’ Now I was raised in Europe [England] where things were a little different 30 years ago. Women weren’t engineers; they were nurses and schoolteachers. I really enjoyed my nursing...it’s just that one day I realized I could do something different. This is a great country for that; it’s the one thing America gives you—the ability to do things you really want to do—it’s not so easy to do this in other countries,” she adds.

After receiving a B.Sc. in electrical engineering, Ms. Shearer eventually found herself working in Moscow. Inquiring about a safety position in the biosafety/biosecurity field, she was told that her background and experience easily qualified her to work as a project engineer on a biosafety/biosecurity joint collaboration between the Government of Kazakstan and the United States, which involved overseeing the safe dismantlement of a huge anthrax bioweapons facility in Stepnogorsk, Kazakstan. As the biosafety/biosecurity engineer on this multi-year effort, Ms. Shearer supervised the disassembly of the three largest buildings at this facility, which had been part of the former Soviet Union’s extensive, and quite advanced, bioweapons research program. She also provided biosafety/biosecurity support in projects involving upgrading Russian Biological Institutes.

Prior to this experience, Ms. Shearer served as medical manager for an oil pipeline project on a joint venture between Russia and the United States. Since the pipeline was being dug through a region where anthrax is found naturally in Russia’s soil, Ms. Shearer became well educated about anthrax and exposure to the bacteria. “Anthrax is endemic, actually, in the United States in the ‘Four Corners’ (the region where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah all meet), and it’s also in Russia,” she says. “Most people who are exposed don’t get sick; in fact, it takes a lot [of anthrax] for someone to get sick.”

The 470 Project Team
In May 2002 SAIC-Frederick, Inc. asked Ms. Shearer to manage the Building 470 Dismantlement Project, which began in February 2003 with asbestos removal. John Bell (SAIC-Frederick, Inc.) is the project’s Construction Manager, while Theresa Duley (Southern Research Institute) is the Safety Representative. Ms. Duley is qualified in both biosafety and construction safety. John, Carol, and Theresa are all part of the project management team responsible for the dismantlement of 470. Another member of the team is anthrax specialist George Anderson, Ph.D., an immunologist who previously worked for USAMRIID. “Dr. Anderson has 25 years of experience in the vaccine world,” notes Ms. Shearer. “Dr. Anderson did a thorough review of all documentation that we have on 470,” she adds. In addition, three other biosafety experts also reviewed the building’s biosafety-related data.

Dismantlement by Phases
And how will Building 470 be dismantled? “Extremely carefully,” answers Ms. Shearer, who notes that 470 adjoins Buildings 469 and 431; 427, 428, and 426 are all close by. Because of this “crowding,” using a wrecking ball or setting off a controlled implosion was not an option. The building will actually be dismantled from the inside, and the project has been divided into three phases.

Phase I, which involved asbestos abatement and planning activities as well as selecting the right company to do this job, has already been completed. Out of four finalists, Controlled Demolition, Inc. (CDI) won the contract—both for its excellent safety record and its experience performing similar work. “CDI is a world-class operation,” Ms. Shearer notes. “They are working in Iraq and they are doing chemical demilitarization in the former Soviet Union, plus they are doing many jobs here in the United States. CDI is most well known for its implosions, but that is only about 1% of their work; they do many, many types of dismantlements,” she adds.

The second phase, which started in May, involves “stripping out” the building’s interior: taking out tanks, miles of pipes, any non-load-bearing walls, and many of the steel grating floors. “A lot of this [flooring] will come out because it makes an excellent way to lower equipment down through the middle of the building,” explains Ms. Shearer. “Everything will be cut up and brought down through the middle of the building where it will be put into big containers and then rolled out to the ‘lay-down’ area for transport,” she adds.

During Phase III, which will overlap Phase II, scaffolding and green construction mesh will surround the building. “As workers take the roof off, they will start dismantling the building and pulling things inward again, and what you will see is the scaffolding and green mesh coming down as the building is dismantled,” says Ms. Shearer. “You won’t be seeing a lot of action outside the building,” she adds.

Safety First
The main safety concern related to Building 470 is controlling dust, an issue common to construction projects. Dust will be minimized by hosing down the site with water. Workers will also use respirators for protection against the metal fumes—a result of the metal cutting necessary during dismantlement.

What about people’s concerns that anthrax spores may still be in the building? “The Army took 1,300 samples during the decommissioning of the building [1970-71] and all those samples were negative,” says Ms. Shearer. “There were two rounds of gas decontamination using formaldehyde, and the closed systems [e.g., fermentors] were all steam-sterilized. Drains and other piping systems that they could not reach with steam were cut and then bleach was pumped up through the pipes, and the bleach was then left to sit [in the pipes] to get anything that was in there. This was a very, very extensive decontamination.” Ms. Shearer’s team has also taken approximately 1500 additional samples in Building 470 and plans to continue sampling throughout the project to ensure there is no evidence of B. anthracis.

Because Building 470 adjoins Buildings 469 and 431, monitoring the noise and vibration is also important. Seismographs have been installed in those labs that immediately adjoin 470 to daily monitor noise and vibration and alert workers and management when levels go above a set tolerance. Any noise problems that occur will be mitigated through the use of smaller pieces of equipment or by switching the more noisy work to off-hours. “The crews will be working 6-day weeks, so that on a Saturday we can make more noise,” explains Ms. Shearer. “The more noise we can make, the faster we can go, and we really want to get the building down. Speed is not the primary concern but we would like to get it down quickly as long as we don’t compromise safety,” she adds. In fact, if anyone on the project sees anything on the site that would constitute imminent danger to one of the workers, he/she can stop the work immediately.

A New Parking Lot!
So when will the ‘Tower’ be completely dismantled? Ms. Shearer believes that the whole building will be down by the end of December 2003, barring any unforeseen delays. And then we will have a new parking lot!

For more information and updates on the Building 470 Project, visit the website at http://web.ncifcrf.gov/campus/470update/

Article by Sue Fox
Office of Communication
Center for Cancer Research
National Cancer Institute at Frederick

Edited by Maritta Grau
Photography by Martha Welch
Scientific Publications, Graphics & Media
SAIC-Frederick, Inc.

Web Graphics and Development by Jim Miller
Computer & Statistical Services
National Cancer Institute at Frederick