BioLabsDHS's Fort Detrick biolab about to open

DHS lab at Fort Detrick, Maryland, is slowly coming to life, as workers finish setting up labs and unpacking state-of-the-art equipment. Security guards are already in place, the building has undergone a stress test, and administrators are overseeing last-minute fixes so researchers can move in the coming weeks.

Frederick News Post’s Megan Eckstein writes that before they bring in their research animals, viruses, and bacteria, DHS and lab operator Battelle National Biodefense Institute invited the Frederick News-Post in for a tour of the $147 million building.

The eight-story building has three distinct sections: administrative offices near the front, biosafety level 2 and 3 labs, and then biosafety level 4 labs on the other side of a thick concrete wall. Designing the BSL-4 labs as essentially their own building has several benefits; most importantly, a fire or other hazard in the other section of the building wouldn’t require the BSL-4 labs to be frantically evacuated.

The 95 lab spaces are also separated based on the two main missions of the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center. “You have the biothreat area, particularly in the BSL-4 area, that is physically separate,” said Brian Gaudet, BNBI spokesman. “And then you have the bioforensics area, which is mostly on the first floor, which is designed to take samples in — very large samples, and small samples — and take it through the bioforensics process to determine what’s on it.”

The forensics area has a vehicle entrance, allowing scientists to take a sample — an envelope, a desk, anything that could be evidence in a biocrime — into a big lab space, prepare samples of a more manageable size, and bring the samples into another smaller lab for study.

Eckstein writes that the labs are still full of boxes and equipment covered in bubble wrap. Outside the changing rooms on the first floor lay mounds of socks and scrubs for the researchers. Within a few weeks, according to BNBI President Pat Fitch, researchers will be bustling around the maze of changing rooms and prep rooms and labs. They won’t be working with hazardous materials for a while, but they’ll start learning the layout of the building and practicing operating procedures using bacteria that are less dangerous.

The building was designed with the most innovative technologies in mind, but designers also considered researchers who may spend long days cooped up inside. The windows align so that sunlight can reach even the innermost labs. The three interstitial floors (the 10-foot-tall space above the lab floors that stores important air ducts and piping) also have windows, lifting the mood of those navigating the jungle of pipes and wires and ducts of varying sizes and colors.

The interstitial floors are filled with all the behind-the-scenes equipment: HEPA filters to keep the air clean, chilled water and steam for the labs, conditioned electricity to accommodate even the most sensitive equipment. These spaces were designed with flexibility in mind, said Pat Weaver, infrastructure operations director for NBACC. The way the pipes line up with the walls in the labs beneath, other resources, such as pressurized gases, could easily be piped into labs.

Eckstein notes that security and safety are recurring themes in the new building. First, one can only access the lab by passing through Fort Detrick security, National Interagency Biodefense Campus security, and then NBACC security — so tight, that the News-Post was not allowed to bring its own cameras inside.

A control room in the BSL-4 side can access cameras in all the labs, so no one can work without some supervision. Building security has access to those same cameras, as well as all others throughout the building.

HEPA filters clean all air coming out of the labs, all waste is pressure cooked before leaving the building, and decontamination chambers with vaporized hydrogen peroxide are scattered throughout the building. All safety and security systems have backups, and most backups have backups. “We like safety around here,” Gaudet said.

Most of the safety features are hidden from plain sight. In about eighteen months, though, when the building becomes fully operational, the 200 employees will certainly appreciate the safety redundancies throughout the building.