I guess, after all, it's Jack Bauer's world, we all just live in it.Dead birds, suspicious events mobilize ASPECT
CAROL A. CLARK Monitor Senior Reporter
Sixty birds, primarily pigeons, sparrows and grackles, were found at 3 a.m. lying dead in the streets around the Texas State Capital Building in Austin on Jan. 8. The alarming discovery sparked swift reaction from an elite multi-agency team to what was initially considered a potential homeland security threat.
The Los Alamos National Laboratory team, headed by scientists Robert Kroutil and Ron Dolin, was notified that their data support would be required in order to respond to the suspicious bird deaths. Kroutil and Dolin work out of LANL's Bio-science B Division. They convened at TA-3, Building 562 during the event, Dolin said.
Within minutes of the call, the ASPECT (Airborne Spectral Photometric Environmental Collection Technology) aircraft was deployed. ASPECT's mission was to perform an air quality assessment and map the area looking for plumes that may have developed and to determine if a source, leak, or concentration could be located, Kroutil said.
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"By itself the Austin event would have just concerned local health and law enforcement officials but too many coincidences were occurring, which caused a heightened sense of concern and it became a federal homeland security event," Dolin said. "On that same day, a suspicious package was found on a loading dock in Miami with preliminary tests showing it contained C4 explosives. Then there was an evacuation of schools and businesses near a tanker leak at a chemical plant in Sugarland, Tex. At the same time a gas odor permeated Manhattan, New York. And all these events were preceded by the arrest of some Middle Eastern men at a Miami Port the previous day."
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"While not toxic, the air in downtown Austin contained substantially elevated levels of isobutylene - a chemical routinely associated with refinery and chemical plant accidents," Kroutil said. "The ASPECT aircraft detected the highest concentration of chemicals around 5th and Congress where the highest number of dead birds were found. An initial theory was that - because Austin had experienced a thermal inversion overnight - perhaps a chemical plant or refinery south of town had an accidental release."
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