To this day, there is no cure.
Were it not for the founding fathers of Plum Island, foot-and-mouth disease never would have been wiped out of North America in a 1948 eradication campaign.
And, but for the existence of Plum Island, it would not have returned to the continent in 1978.
While Dr. Dardiri was confirming his worst suspicions, Dr. Callis had gathered the lab chiefs and management staff to his office in Building 54, perched on a bluff overlooking Gardiner's Bay and the faint shoreline of Montauk Point in the distance. He briefed the group and dusted off a copy of the 1969 emergency operations plan, the most recent one they had. Though the plan called for a secret code to be used in the event of an outbreak inside U.S. borders to avoid public alarm—"Rumen" for rinderpest virus, "Nada" for foot-and-mouth disease virus — no code names were necessary internally.
The plan called for Armageddon — destroy every living thing on the island except humans. Somebody provided a head count of all fauna: ninety-four cattle, eighty-seven pigs, sixty-six lambs, twenty-eight rabbits, twenty-seven chickens, thirteen goats, six horses, and two ducks, and colonies of mice and guinea pigs. The test animal population on this isle, combined with the flocks of wild birds, deer, insects, and other small critters, was larger than Noah's Ark.
"We can't dispose of the carcasses by burial as the plan calls for — it would take far too long. The risk of epidemic increases every moment infected animals remain alive. I'm going to need everyone's support here."
When Dardiri called and confirmed a virus outbreak, the group unanimously agreed to burn the place up and scurried off to tell their subordinates. To ease their minds, the line workers were told the escaped virus rarely affected humans, though many of them knew about Billy Doroski's infection, when he accidentally injected himself with a healthy dose of the virus.[25] Billy stuck himself with a needle when inoculating guinea pigs, and soon after, his finger swelled and he contracted flulike symptoms. Plum Island scientists confined him in quarantine, inside the containment laboratory, for a full week. When they tested his blood, they found antibodies and confirmed he had indeed been infected with foot-and-mouth disease virus. They freed him only after the virus had run its course. After being released from biological quarantine, he went home and wore a rubber glove on the infected hand for five days, and then returned to work.
All workers were directed to cease all work and await further instructions. The first order of business was to decontaminate and evacuate everyone on the island, except for the outbreak control team. Then every single animal would be hauled into the lab and, after blood and tissue samples were taken, incinerated. Meanwhile, everything on the island would be sprayed down and chemically scorched. Washington would have to be notified and, only if absolutely necessary, the public at large. Any chance there was to keep this under wraps, however, was negated by the presence of sixty-five private contractor workers then building a massive extension onto Lab 101. Carpenters had been hacking and sawing away at the building for two years now, and there wasn't a soul in Callis's office that afternoon who didn't suspect they were the cause of this mess. The foreman was called over to be briefed on measures his men would be expected to follow.
Dr. Callis's phone rang. It was Dardiri again. The director's expression turned grim. More bad news. The people aboard the ferry that had been launched at noon for Orient Point were now potential traveling mobile disease vectors. Alarmed, they radioed the ferry captain just before the boat docked at its destination. Now the mainland knew something had gone wrong. A crowd of people, who had gathered to meet their family members after a half-day shift, watched curiously as the boat approached and then mysteriously circled around and sped back to Plum Island. Dr. Callis ordered the emergency plan into immediate action. From this point forward, Plum Island would be under a full lockdown. No one was permitted to leave. The director now faced the most painful task of his career — issuing a press release announcing the island's very first virus outbreak.
Everybody got a call to go in and see if their animals were sick," remembers Dr. Carol House, who was working in Lab 257 at the time. "Then we were told to sit tight." Researching in the windowless, fluorescent-lit containment lab rooms on a typical day was difficult enough. "You don't know what time it is, you lose track of things and become very focused. Some people developed light deprivation and seasonal affective disorder," recalls a Plum Island researcher. Once the air-lock doors began to hiss and inflate behind them, researchers hunched over their lab benches, amid the low hum of the air blowers, burying themselves in their work with no connection to the outside world. At Plum Island, isolation and compartmental-ization became a way of life.
Now, the walls on the "inside" were closing in. Those with telephones contacted their spouses (which took infinite attempts because the switchboard was jammed) to tell them what had happened and that they wouldn't be home for dinner, but they were okay. Dr. House's lab partner that day was a visiting scientist in from Paris. She planned to train him on the latest diagnostic techniques, but all research work was called off and the two sat around twiddling their thumbs. "It was kind of funny, because he thought we did this every day, and my French wasn't good enough to tell him this day was very different."
Hours later, the 390 workers finally permitted to leave Plum Island — but they had to be decontaminated first. Crews went into each laboratory change room, bagged and labeled everyone's street clothes, and took them away. In place, they laid out one-size-fits-all sterilized white coveralls and white slip-on tennis shoes. Personal belongings, like watches, jewelry, pocketbooks, and wallets, were removed from the change-room lockers. Car keys and eyeglasses would be permitted — after all, people had to drive their cars home— but only after they were carefully dipped in an acetic acid bath. Idling in the cramped containment rooms, pacing endlessly back and forth, began to drive people batty. Finally, minutes before 8:00 p.m., they were released. Entering the change rooms, the staff members showered out without towels and put coveralls on their wet bodies. They were going home.
Exiting the laboratories en masse, the workers looked like a horde of invading aliens in baggy white spacesuits. The 325 staff and the 65 construction workers evacuated in a quiet, orderly fashion. By then they were too tired to say anything. The sharp odor of burning hay was in the air as they filed onto a bus, which splashed through a makeshift decontamination lagoon before pulling up to the decontaminated ferry. Other than the thirty-five-man cleanup crew, everyone was off the island by 8:45 p.m. Frances Demorest, Plum Island's assistant librarian, recalls getting home at midnight and greeting her husband. "I woke Harrison up, and he just looked at me and let out a great laugh. My hair was hanging and I was wearing size forty white coveralls and plastic sneakers. Oh, what a mess!"
The first load of Hereford steers left the animal pen, Building 62, at 9:00 p.m. and boarded the cattle truck bound for the east animal wing of Lab 101. Animal handlers hauled the goats, sheep, horses, and pigs from their stalls into the west animal wing, then onto the loading platform. As they emptied the pens, the areas were sprayed down with a lye solution to kill live germs that escaped. Within two hours, all of the animals moved out of Building 62. The men showered, changed clothes, and went on to the larger task of removing the animals held in Building 21 and in the old Army bunker, Battery Steele. That took until daybreak on Saturday. Downstairs, in the rear of the building, workers cranked up the oil-fired incinerator.
25
The first human case of foot-and-mouth disease virus was reported in the hamlet of Yetlington, England, in 1966. There, farmhand Robert Brewis contracted large blisters on his hands and inside his mouth. He also suffered grogginess and other flulike conditions. Attacked by a swarm of reporters, he managed a joke for the English tabloids. The doctors said he would recover and would not have to follow the fate of lower animals who caught the virus. "My only worry was that I might have to be destroyed," Brewis said of his infection.