CDC: Offline generators caused germ lab outage

Source: ajc.com

A critical germ lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lost power last week because the agency had taken two backup generators out of service for upgrades, CDC officials said Friday.

Their absence from a complex, centralized backup generator system created a power fluctuation when the system was activated during a July 11 power outage, causing the whole system to shut down, CDC spokesman Dave Daigle said. The problem is being fixed, he said.

The backup power failure — the second in 13 months — is the type predicted years ago by some CDC engineers. And it has heightened concerns in Congress about lab safety at the Atlanta agency, which experiments on smallpox, Ebola, anthrax and other deadly germs.

“For high containment labs, repeated power failures are repeated safety failures,” said U.S. Rep. John Dingell, chairman of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has been investigating biolab safety nationally.

“Fortunately, there were no adverse consequences this time,” Dingell (D-Mich.) said Friday. “However, the fact that these incidents continue to occur raises serious concerns about the future and highlights the fact that CDC must act now to address problems in its system.”

Last week’s incident began when a bird shorted out a Georgia Power transformer about 5:40 p.m., cutting off power to part of the CDC’s main campus on Clifton Road. The agency’s backup generation system initially came on, but quickly shut down, and power remained off for one hour and 15 minutes at four agency buildings.

July 22, 2008 | Filed Under Pestilence 

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Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States