Established when the facility began operations a half-century ago, the comprehensive Plum Island biological safety manual sets forth explicit "Emergency Hurricane Procedures." Lying in perhaps the most vulnerable spot in the northeast hurricane corridor, Plum Island played host to violent fall weather as soon as the USDA arrived — and long before. Storms in the 1700s and 1800s wrecked numerous schooners on its rocks, whose victims' bodies (often anonymous) were buried on the island; during the 1950s, said an old employee, every day after a rough storm hit, another person resigned from staff. A gale swept through the east end in November of 1953 as finishing touches were being put on Lab 257. Much like Bob, this storm struck Plum Island dead on with devastating force. Tidal waves rushed in from Gardiner's Bay, wrecking one of the Army's boats and flooding three feet deep against Lab 257's four-foot concrete barrier, recently installed and dried. The T-boat was found the next day, dragged across the beach and broken to pieces. Channels connecting the marshy ponds with the bay were cut wide open from waves. Seawater flooded in, creating a brackish environment that not only threatened the freshwater wells, but could shear off twenty acres at Pine Point and erase the land buffer between Lab 257 and the ocean. Awaiting the inevitable destruction of the next nor'easter, the Army Corps of Engineers sandbagged the channels shut and filled the area with tons of jetty rocks. Though Lab 257 was saved, the close call should have called into question — before its doors opened — the decision to locate a germ lab on the island's southwest shore. A Plum Island hurricane inundation table shows Lab 257 completely inundated with water during a CAT-3 hurricane's twelve-foot surge elevations.
Knowing firsthand the potential for disaster, the scientists who founded the animal disease laboratory on Plum Island drew up the hurricane emergency plan:
The aftermath conditions of a severe storm or other natural caused disaster could severely limit or prevent the emergency operations of facilities….Potential breaching of the agent contaminant aspects of [Plum Island] facilities and escape of disease agents could also occur in this type of emergency condition.
Upon issuance of a twenty-four-hour hurricane warning by the National Weather Service, procedures dictate securing laboratory buildings to protect against damage. This includes covering all windows with one-quarter inch plywood and sandbagging buildings to minimize water damage in low-lying areas. The emergency plan specifically mentions sandbagging Lab 257, but when Hurricane Bob was on its way, no one sandbagged 257 or the power plant. Because of this oversight, the power plant flooded. It was only through the ingenuity and hard work of men like Phillip Piegari that the generators were saved, averting the loss of power to the entire island and a far greater catastrophe.
In addition to securing the buildings, the emergency procedures mandated additional safety measures for approaching hurricanes:
a. Water tower must be filled to capacity;
b. All underground electrical feeders shall be utilized;
c. Stand-by generators must be operational and be attended by competent operators;
d. All sewage in Buildings #102 and #257 must be processed and tanks emptied; and
e. Employees must be advised to have food, water, prescription medicines, etc., within their respective work stations.
Management failed to follow these procedures after receiving the hurricane warning for Hurricane Bob. In fact, they didn't follow a single one. Item a. simply did not occur. Items b. and c. were impossible, thanks to management's disregard of safety when it failed to repair Lab 257's underground power cable. If procedure d. had been followed, sewage would not have spilled onto the floor and contaminated the building and the men of B Crew. Finally, the lack of proper provisions mandated by item e. forced Phillip Piegari to leave containment to obtain provisions for the crew. "I don't think they expected the hurricane to be of that magnitude, that it could do such damage. But they knew it was coming and didn't prepare for it," one crew member later reasoned.
The government broke Dr. Jerry Callis's cardinal rule. "Each person," Dr. Callis wrote in the introduction to his three-inch-thick island safety manual circulated to all new employees, "has a moral and legal responsibility for assuring that maximum biological safety precautions will be taken in all operations." A reckless disregard of Callis's edict and the standard emergency safety procedures caused Lab 257 to come apart at the seams during Hurricane Bob. Those responsible for Plum Island safety, notably island Director Dr. Roger Breeze, compromised the safety of both the island's employees and the public at large. It is only by a stroke of good fortune that contamination didn't noticeably spread to Long Island, Connecticut, and beyond.
The government refused to admit anything went wrong in Lab 257. Dr. Plowman's letter of commendation didn't acknowledge that a power outage actually occurred. Management treated B Crew's thirty-two-hour dance with a hurricane like a typical day on Plum Island. Over time, the men found other employment or retired. A few continued to work on Plum Island for the private contractor, at a fraction of their previous wages, without any meaningful retirement benefits.
Soon after the hurricane, Phillip Piegari developed flulike symptoms — constant nausea, severe headaches, and hot-and-cold flashes. His family physician requested the blood sample that Plum Island officials took when he began employment. The government refused to release it. After a News-day article uncovered the government's stonewalling, officials gave in and released a portion of the blood sample. After batteries of tests, neither his doctor nor doctors from the State University Medical Center at Stony Brook were able to diagnose Phillip's illness. Like all standard medical centers, the facility was not equipped to check his blood against exotic "animal viruses," many of which can infect humans. One location, however, did have the ability to test for them: the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. They refused to help. Instead, the scientists insisted that Phillip was a disgruntled laid-off worker suffering from a typical Lyme disease infection. But his medical doctors flatly refused to diagnose Phillip's condition as Lyme disease. The symptoms went undiagnosed and unabated for six years before they gradually subsided, though he continues to suffer occasional mysterious relapses where he contracts viral-like symptoms. Over a decade later, Phillip Piegari tries to lead a generally healthy, normal life. Nonetheless, he is certain that he was infected with an unknown virus from his contact with contaminated sewage and poisoned air in Lab 257 on that fateful night. And Plum Island's determination to prevent an accurate diagnosis only furthers that likelihood.
There is reason to believe Phillip wasn't the only one who contracted something that night.
Two years after he helped rescue Lab 257 from certain meltdown, Stanley "Shine" Mickaliger came down with relentless arthritic conditions. First he had a difficult time bending his elbow. Then his legs hurt him when he walked. And then he couldn't walk at all. "For eighteen months, I was deadly sick — my wife would have to fit me into the car to go see the local doctor." Shine's country physician put him on a heavy regimen of cortisone steroid shots to bring down inflammation, which eased some of the pain, but replaced it with a dogged malaise and awful bruises from bumping into things around the house. Plum Island viewed Shine's illness the same way they did Phillip's and those of others — with denial and with contempt. Unlike Phillip, Shine couldn't offer his doctors a baseline blood sample, since Plum Island never took one from him during his twenty-year career. When he asked a Plum Island safety officer for help in finding out the cause of his condition, the official told him there was no money in the budget to do it, and that they didn't have the dime for it. "It's hard to prove," says Shine, "and I wasn't bled by Plum Island, so who knows?" He couldn't point to the Lab 257 meltdown as the definitive cause, however, because that fateful weekend wasn't the first time he was exposed to contagion.