The Boston Globe from Boston, Massachusetts • 15

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2006 The Boston Globe City Region B3 Whooping cough hits hospital's workers i i i Crews washed buses at the First Student bus yards in Charlestown. Dust-collection equipment malfunctioned, sending cement powder into the adjacent bus yard. Cement dust accident causes school bus delays WHOOPING COUGH Continued from Page Bl seek medical attention," said Dr. Leonard Morse, Worcester's public health commissioner. Whooping cough is a highly infectious bacterial disease that can produce a rattling, rib-cracking cough, with symptoms that can linger for months and rob patients of sleep and weight.

Studies have shown that 62 percent of adults with pertussis are still coughing three months after symptoms appear. While the symptoms can be persistent, the disease rarely kills anyone past infancy. Irish said none of the infected St. Vincent staff members worked on the pediatric or maternity wards. Staff members with symptoms of the disease have been sent home, Irish said, and have been prescribed an antibiotic called azithromycin.

Kathie Brennock, a nurse in anesthesiology, said the employee health office had contacted her because she worked with an-'other staff member who became ill. Brennock was offered antibiotics, which she gladly took, she said, because she has a young grandchild. Brennock said the outbreak is exacting a toll on hospital staffing. "Some floors are having trouble keeping staffing up to level," she said. A hospital housekeeping worker, Afua Amankwah, said she had not been notified of the outbreak but wished she had.

Irish said By Brian MacQuarrie i GLOBE STAFF Hundreds of Boston public school students experienced delays in their bus rides to and from school yesterday in the aftermath of an industrial accident Thursday that coated about 60 buses with 'cement dust in Charlestown and sent 61 drivers to hospitals. In the morning, dozens of school buses were delayed. Although about 95 percent of bus routes were covered, the Boston public schools transportation hotline listed at least 25 routes with major delays. On the way home, while all routes were covered, 'some elementary and middle school students were delayed for more than an hour, said Jonathan Palumbo, the schools' spokesman. Principals were asked to remain at the schools with the children until tioned on top of one of six silos at the Medford Street facility, sending a massive plume of cement powder into the adjacent bus yard and a storage facility for automobiles.

The dust sent 61 bus drivers to hospitals with minor respiratory problems and coated about 60 buses with the powder, identified as crystalline silica. About 350 automobiles were affected in a nearby storage lot and will become a priority after the buses are completed, officials said. School officials believe that all bus drivers have been released from hospitals. The buses were in the Cincinnati-based First Student bus company yard, where about 200 buses, nearly one-third of the city's school bus fleet, are parked overnight. The state Department of Envi they all had boarded buses.

School buses will run normally Monday, Palumbo said. All the buses that had been coated with cement powder from the Lafarge North America facility were expected to be cleaned by the end of yesterday, Palumbo said. Yesterday, more than 100 workers from environmental cleanup companies hired by Lafarge decontaminated buses and the Charlestown parking lot, next to the Lafarge plant, where they are stored. City health officials said yesterday they do not believe that the accident poses a respiratory threat to the public. According to the city Public Health Commission, air-monitoring tests in the neighborhood showed results "well below acceptable exposures" for components in the dust.

every move, election workers shuffled through ballots at 15 counting tables in a scene that soon resembled the tense 2000 presidential recounts in Florida The recount bogged down early, with lawyers for each candidate circling the room and bringing up frequent objections and deliberations over questionable ballots. A lengthy protest kept one table at a standstill for nearly an hour because a voter had written "State Senator Dianne Wilkerson" in black ink, but it 'From beginning, was about principles good Sonia Recount confirms Wilkerson victory in Boston Senate race I f- S) ft a 1 1 1 fV 1 I 1 "7' GEORGE RIZERGLOBE STAFF ronmental Protection and the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration are investigating the accident, officials said. "We'll certainly try to determine what happened, and if any of OSHA's safety and health standards were violated," said John Chavez, an OSHA spokesman. The state DEP said decontamination also continued yesterday on the bus parking lot, which was cleared of vehicles for the work. Joe Ferson, a DEP spokesman, said storm drains were sealed in the lot to prevent contaminated washwater, which is being collected by cleanup workers, from draining into the Mystic River.

Globe correspondent Andrew Ryan contributed to this report. Brian MacQuarrie can be reached at macquarriegbbe.com. campaign. The district's 10 wards include Jamaica Plain, Mission Hill, Chinatown, Fenway, Roxbury, the South End, and parts of the Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Dorchester, and Mattapan. Matt Viser can be reached at maviserglobe.com.

He said Redd did not have anything to do with the case. One of Redd's primary responsibilities as presiding judge is making sure cases are not taken under advisement and held too long, according to a former district court judge who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case. Redd did not respond to several messages left at his home. Brian R. Ballou and Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report.

Donovan Slack can be reached at dslackglobe.com. the this the of Chang-Diaz Executives at Lafarge, the world's largest manufacturer of cement, said they are continuing an internal investigation into the accident, which occurred during a delivery of the powder, and plan to meet with city officials Monday. "Since the incident, the entire facility has been shut down," said Craig Campbell, vice president for environmental affairs at Lafarge. "It will be that way until we complete our cleanup and share with the city our plan to fix the mechanical equipment" and implement fail-safes to prevent a repeat of the mishap. Campbell said Lafarge officials could not recall a similar accident at the facility, which the company has managed since 2001.

The accident occurred about 12:45 p.m. Thursday, when dust-collection equipment malfunc had to write the name and address of their choice or affix a sticker bearing the same information and then mark an oval next to the name. Both candidates said there were problems with the way the city handled the voting. The morning after the Sept. 19 primary, Chang-Diaz trailed Wilkerson by 141 votes when officials discovered more than 2,700 ballots that had been overlooked by election workers.

A four-hour public count Sept 21 at City Hall extended Wilkerson's victory to 692 votes, or 5 percent of the 12,933 votes cast in the state Senate race. Many political observers along with Chang-Diaz said the gap was probably too wide to close, but the 28-year-old former schoolteacher refused to concede the race. She said she wanted to expose problems in a write-in campaign that confused many voters and caused headaches at polling places. Her campaign gathered enough signatures to force a recount in eight of the 10 wards. A judge ruled Thursday that the city had to recount all wards in the district because this case was "a terribly unusual situation" and an issue of "public confidence in the accuracy of the election." "No matter what the outcome, this is a good day," Chang-Diaz political life with a write-in campaign.

Chang-Diaz announced her intention to run shortly before the June hearing. Wilkerson, on the heels of a recount victory at City Hall last night, would not comment directly about the case, saying, "That is so not my focus right now." She said that between publicity and campaign attacks about her financial affairs and other matters, she is being singled out "I've never seen another elected official in this state who has withstood this kind of assault." Bolden, who ultimately ruled in favor of the plaintiff and or- ByMattViser and Brian R. Ballou GLOBE STAFF City election workers, after a tense day painstakingly reviewing more than 25,000 ballots under the scrutiny of campaign volunteers and lawyers, declared Dianne Wilkerson the official Democratic nominee in the Second Suffolk Senate race. Wilkerson was expressionless as the assistant register of votes, John Donovan, announced at 9 p.m. that a recount had widened the incumbent's lead.

1 "I hope now we can move on," she said. The final tally had Wilkerson with 6,478 votes to 5,711 for her challenger, Sonia Chang-Diaz. It was a more decisive win than had been originally counted on election night, when Wilkerson led by 141 votes. Wilkerson now faces Republican Samiyah Diaz in the general election. As the totals were read yesterday, Chang-Diaz approached Wilkerson, shook her hand, and uttered congratulations.

An aide distributed prepared concession statements. "From the beginning, this was about the principles of good governance she said later. "No matter what the outcome, I feel every voter won something today." The recount began yesterday morning after election officials brought in metal boxes that contained ballots from last week's primary election. With crowds of supporters in the room observing that letters are being sent out to all employees. Surgical workers were informed earlier.

The first Stall members with symptoms have been sent home. case in the outbreak was confirmed Sept 7 and reported by a hospital infectious disease nurse to Worcester health authorities the next day, Irish said. State law requires that many infectious diseases be reported to public health authorities within 24 hours of being identified. Morse said he was not personally notified of the outbreak until Thursday. So far this year, 780 cases of pertussis have been reported in Massachusetts, said Donna Rheaume, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Health.

"We always take a situation like this seriously, but we think the hospital is being proactive now," Rheaume said. Hospital officials said they expect to send letters to 2,000 patients who may have been exposed to the germ by healthcare workers. "To date we have not identified a patient to whom the disease has spread," Irish said. "That may happen, but it has not yet happened." Ron and Annemarie Fairhurst were at the hospital last night to visit their daughter, who had given birth. When told about the outbreak, they asked why the hospital had not posted fliers notifying patients and visitors.

"It would be a little bit more effective if you put fliers on the door," Ron Fairhurst said. "I do have issues with how they notified people and how long it took." Babies today are routinely vaccinated against pertussis, much as they are against measles, mumps, and other diseases of childhood. At one time, public health specialists had figured the disease was destined for extinc-. tion in the United States, just like polio and smallpox. But as the vaccine came into wider use, an important shortcoming was identified: The shot's effectiveness wanes within five to 10 years, leaving recipients vulnerable to infection.

In 2005, federal health regu lators approved the first pertussis booster shot, a lower dose of what is given to infants and thus less likely to cause adverse reaction. Stephen Smith can be reached at stsmithglobe.com. JOHN TLUMACKIGLOBt STAFF State Senator Dianne Wilkerson (left) and challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz watched volunteers tally the ballots during yesterday's recount at Boston City Hall. was in the wrong spot on the ballot. Another table stopped because a voter had written in "Diaz (Dem)." Election workers and campaign representatives deliberated about whether the voter intended to vote for Chang-Diaz, a Democrat, or Samiyah Diaz, a South End Republican who will face the Democratic nominee in the general election.

The ballot was ultimately thrown out. The recount closes a chapter in what became a long election saga. Initially, Wilkerson found herself in the fight for her political life when she failed earlier in the year to get the 300 signatures needed to get her name on the ballot in the Democratic primary and Chang-Diaz entered the race. Wilkerson's oversight forced a write-in campaign in which voters alleged that Wilkerson owed $13,335 and filed records in the case showing the senator had bounced more than $5,000 in checks during the past three years and hadn't paid her $466 monthly fee since September 2005. Wilkerson's fiscal dealings were a central issue in the recent Senate campaign, with her opponents citing her failure to pay federal taxes for several years in the 1990s and the attorney general's office currently investigating her campaign finances.

Wilkerson, who had failed to gather enough signatures to get on the ballot, was fighting for her Handling of Wilkerson CclSC referred to judicial panel said earlier in the day. "It's a good day for the City of Boston." Indeed, throughout the process, Chang-Diaz, focused less on her loss and turned the recount instead into an indictment on the city's election procedures. Some speculated that could help raise her profile and lay the groundwork for another political dered Wilkerson to pay, said on Thursday that he did not rule immediately because he wanted to review the case file in more detail. He also said his failure to do so in a timely manner was an oversight he blamed on the "press of business" in the courts. Sworn in last year, Bolden said he is inexperienced in civil cases and his handling of the Wilkerson matter was not an attempt to help her campaign.

"I do know her," he said. "I know her from years ago when I was a law student and she was a law student" He said that did not influence his handling of her case. WILKERSON Continuedfrom Page Bl appeared before the Governor's Council, where Wilkerson spoke on his behalf. That appearance came about a month after she had become the first black woman elected to the state Senate. Wilkerson had previously been the vice president and legal counsel for the Boston chapter of the iNAACP.

Redd was executive of the Boston NAACP from 1974 to 1976 and remained a member in the 1990s. The lawsuit by the Douglass Condominiurj Association.