Tom Tomich of Cape Coral Fire and Rescue. The letter said the envelope contained anthrax and that the note wasn't a joke. The employee immediately called 911 and a slew of agencies, including the Cape Coral hazardous materials unit, Cape Coral police and the FBI, were sent to the building. Tomich said all 14 employees working in the complex at the time were stripped, decontaminated and given disinfected robes to wear to Cape Coral Hospital. The FBI is testing the contents of the envelope in its Orlando lab.
Anthrax is a bacteria sometimes used in biological warfare.
It rapidly produces toxins that cause severe damage to the respiratory system and brain. Untreated patients usually die within days. Although bioterrorism in any form seems like a Doomsday scenario, the stuff of millennium novels and Schwarzenegger movies, we would be blind, indeed, to imagine that it could not happen, or that it could not happen here. And, lest we are tempted as Americans to climb upon too high a horse, let us remember that our country is the only nation to have used nuclear bombs against human targets. One only has to read John Hersey's Hiroshima to experience, not some imagined scenario, but what really happens to a population when the social contract meets the mushroom cloud.