Anthrax anxiety spread to campus yesterday morning as employees at both the Ivy Grille and an office building on the corner of 34th and Walnut streets called police to investigate suspicious powdery substances.
In the end, both powders were determined to be harmless, but business at the Ivy Grille, the upscale restaurant located inside the Inn at Penn at 3611 Walnut St., was disrupted for several hours.
According to manager Jeff MacCauley, one of the restaurant's waitresses noticed some dust on a table while she was seating customers at around 7 a.m.
"She called in another manager to look at it, and they got alarmed because of everything that's been going on lately, so they called Penn Police, who came in and checked it out," MacCauley said.
The campus restaurant was completely cleared during the incident.
"We evacuated until after the tests were completed," MacCauley said.
University Police called in members of the Philadelphia Police Department to help handle the situation and to test the powder.
The restaurant remained closed throughout the morning, then began serving lunch only in an upstairs portion of the Inn at Penn during the afternoon. However, the restaurant did re-open fully for dinner in the evening.
Police determined the substance to be completely harmless.
"It was just construction residue," University Police Det. Supervisor Frank DeMeo said.
As it turns out, MacCauley said, the powder resulted from a routine maintenance visit at the restaurant.
"What happened was last night the Engineering Department changed a light bulb," MacCauley said. "And when they pulled the bulb out, the dust from the ceiling fell on the table, and they didn't bother to wipe it up."
Police also received a call yesterday morning at around 11:45 a.m. alerting them to a suspicious powder inside the office buildings at 3401 Walnut St.
Employees called University Police because they noticed the powder on a piece of incoming mail. In addition to Penn Police officers, members of the University's Fire and Occupational Safety and Environmental Safety departments were also dispatched to the scene.
The substance turned out to be nothing more than powdered coffee creamer, and police officials said the alarm was completely unfounded in this case.
Although Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney has declared that Philadelphia is not at a high risk for anthrax attacks, DeMeo said people should still be aware of circumstances around them.
"People are keeping their eyes open, and remaining vigilant, and when they see something suspicious, they're letting us know about it," he said.
