Newly disclosed CDC biolab failures 'like a screenplay for a disaster movie'

A USA TODAY Network investigation works to uncover details about accidents at biolabs where experiments are done with deadly pathogens. The labs are largely self-policing and often secretive when accidents occur. USA TODAY

Encased in spacesuit-like gear needed to protect them from the world’s deadliest viruses, four scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stepped into their lab’s decontamination chamber where a shower of chemicals was supposed to kill anything on them and make it safe for them to exit into an adjacent changing room.

But the shower wouldn’t start, and warning lights appeared as a cascading series of safety systems began to fail inside one of the world’s most advanced biosafety level 4 labs. That's the highest level of containment and security, reserved for work with deadly Ebola and smallpox viruses and other pathogens that lack vaccines or reliable treatments.

The gasket seal around the exit door to the changing room deflated to the point that the scientists could see light coming in. And as they held that door shut and started an emergency chemical deluge, things got even worse.

The shower’s door back into the infectious disease lab “forcefully” burst open again and again – and they couldn’t even hold it shut. Meanwhile, air pressure alarms were blinking and monitors displayed the lab as “red,” according to records of the February 2009 incident recently obtained by USA TODAY under a Freedom of Information Act. The CDC took 3 ½ years to fulfill the request.

The records release comes as the CDC has faced two congressional hearings since a series of high-profile lab incidents in 2014 with anthrax, Ebola and a deadly strain of avian flu, and amid mounting concerns in Congress about the effectiveness of lab regulation and whether a lack of transparency keeps serious lab safety problems hidden from the public.

Despite the dramatic series of equipment failures in the 2009 CDC biosafety level 4 (BSL-4) lab incident, the newly released records include emails showing some within the agency sought at the time to avoid reporting to federal lab regulators in another division at the agency, though they eventually were notified.

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