Thousands Try to Purchase Gas Masks

By Regine Labossiere | STAFF WRITER

September 22, 2001

The fears about biological and chemical warfare in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are sending thousands of area residents to military stores seeking gas masks, even though experts say the devices likely will offer little protection.

On Friday, 1,500 gas masks were sold at Iceberg Army Navy of SoHo, a salesman said.

The manager of Shep's Army & Navy Store in Ozone Park said the store has received hundreds of phone calls in the past two weeks for gas masks, compared to the two or three phone calls a year it would usually receive.

Kaufman's Army & Navy, Mash Army and Navy Store Inc., and Bar-Ted Army and Navy Stores Inc. also said Friday they had sold out of the much-wanted gas masks.

"The second they come in boxes, they go out," a salesman at Iceberg said of the gas masks. "People are scared."

Customers are saying they are worried about biological warfare, which reportedly has been the subject of military talks since it was suspected to have been present in the Persian Gulf War. But the masks found at surplus stores do not definitively protect the wearer from contaminants in the air, one manager said.

One couple, who did not want to be identified by name, on Friday went to Aramsco, a safety products store and warehouse, to buy gas masks for the family.

"We're buying them just in case of biological warfare," the husband said. "Although, I don't feel endangered and I don't feel like we're going to use them."

Aramsco, a supply store in Long Island City that has donated thousands of masks to the FBI, the fire and police departments of New York, and the volunteer workers at Ground Zero, does sell gas masks that do protect against biological warfare, but the owner is trying to discourage people from buying them.

"Unless you're planning to wear this thing all the time, you're wasting your money," said Dave Naylor, the owner.

Rinaldo A. Campana, retired unit chief of weapons of mass destruction in the Counter-Terrorism Unit of the FBI, agreed with Naylor.

"There is false security and erroneous trust in a mask. If a nerve agent [used in chemical warfare] gets on your skin, you will die from that," Campana said.

In biological warfare, the best thing to do is stay in a place that is shut tight, with no air coming in from the outside and to stay there for a few days, he said. But if viruses were to be emitted, no one would know for up to 14 days after the virus has incubated and symptoms occur.

On Long Island, military stores were selling out of gas masks as quickly as they can get them in. Nassau and Suffolk police headquarters report a dramatic increase in people requesting applications for pistol licenses: Suffolk has not tracked exact numbers, but Nassau said theirs have at least doubled. Stores that sell guns are also reporting increased sales.

A dentist, who asked not be named, slapped his pistol permit on the counter at Camp-Site Sports Shop in Huntington Station Friday and tested the grip of various .45-caliber handguns. Until now he's owned only a target pistol, but said "fear and anger" brought him into the store. "I want to protect myself and my family if it reaches a local level," said the dentist, who has a 7-year-old daughter. "There's a lot of uncertainty out there."

Staff writers Barbara J. Durkin and Theresa Vargas contributed to this story.