BY TANYA BRICKING
The Cincinnati Enquirer
SHELBYVILLE, Ind. -- For five hours on Saturday, 41 people in this Indiana town 70 miles northwest of Cincinnati thought they might have been exposed to deadly anthrax.
Now they think it was just spilled coffee.
The scare began about 9 a.m. when a Shelbyville postman noticed that a business envelope being mailed to the local hospital appeared to be leaking a brown substance.
Postal carriers had been warned to be on the lookout for suspicious packages because abortion clinics in Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee received letters Friday claiming to contain anthrax, which can be lethal even in microscopic amounts. A clinic in Kansas and a second one in Kentucky received similar letters Saturday.
Late Saturday, the FBI said tests revealed that letters received in Indiana and Kentucky on Friday did not contain anthrax.
All the letters bore Cincinnati postmarks.
The Shelbyville letter was mailed in Shelbyville, but the carrier flagged his bosses because it looked suspicious.
"He did the right thing," Postmaster Robert McGill II said. "We followed the steps of our crisis management plan and evacuated the building."
The 31 post office employees got tired and cold standing in the parking lot, so they asked whether they could go inside the Knights of Columbus hall a block away, said Tom Duvelius, 58, a K. of C. manager. They went inside, but that set off another crisis when authorities feared the employees may have contaminated 10 more people at the hall.
"We're just a real small town," said Kurt Lockridge, deputy chief of the Shelbyville Fire Department. "We have a 45-man fire department, and it just kind of overwhelmed us."
The department called in the hazardous-materials crew from Columbus, Ind.; the state fire marshal's office; the FBI; and the postal inspector. It lined up all available ambulances.
Sam Hammond, 61, ate breakfast at the hall buffet, but left before he knew what happened. Others tracked him down and warned him so he couldn't contaminate anyone else.
"If it was anything like they thought it was, you don't want to take it home to your family," the Shelbyville man said.
All 41 people were quarantined until authorities could inspect the package.
"None of us could leave, and nobody could come in," Mr. Duvelius said. "They were just concerned of what could happen."
The envelope turned out to be bills mailed from the local Holiday Inn to Major Hospital.
And the substance?
"They think it was a coffee stain," Deputy Chief Lockridge said. "But until they test it, they're not going to know 100 percent."
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