Gas Masks

A new shipment of 500 gas masks arrived at the Original I. Goldberg military-surplus store on Chestnut Street yesterday, and though the protection they offered might be more talismanic than technological, a steady stream of customers was buying them. Derek Connolly bought eight, paying $213.91, tax included. He said four masks were for him, his girlfriend, his mother and his stepfather, and the other four were for someone who works with his mother - the family worrier, who called to tell him that Goldberg's shipment had finally arrived.

Israelis, worried by Iraq's chemical weapons threat, lined up yesterday for the biggest distribution of gas masks since World War II. The army, under orders to allocate kits to all 4.7 million Jews and Arabs in Israel, began with the 30,000 residents of Yokneam, Kfar Yona and Ofakim in the north, center and south of the country. "I'm very excited," said Irit Dahan, as she smiled a hesitant smile at her husband and their three young children in Kfar Yona. "We're afraid of Saddam Hussein and the gas. " Israel delayed distribution for two months after Iraq seized Kuwait in August.

Fears of a Mideast war sparked a run on gas mask sales to the point where by Wednesday both Original I. Goldberg stores - one at Franklin Mills mall and the other at 902 Chestnut St. - were sold out and awaiting new supplies. Most buyers said they would send the masks to friends and relatives overseas. Nanna Goldberg, vice president of the company, said both of the family- owned stores "have been getting calls for them for quite some time now. But sales have surged within the last week.

At the Camping & Government Surplus store near Victoria Station yesterday, few customers were interested in mosquito nets or camouflage clothing. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a gas mask or a protective suit. "They're frightened, obviously, and they're panicking," said owner Howard Davis, who was turning away customers after he sold the 50 gas masks he had in stock yesterday. "I suppose they want to be prepared. " With Britons fearing they could be the target of a biological or chemical attack by terrorists, military surplus stores here have been overrun.

Where do you get gas masks? What kind of shortwave radio do you need to bring in broadcasts from the Middle East? As Philadelphians turn their attention to the events in the Persian Gulf, shoppers are looking for those items and are even snapping up military fatigue outfits, retailers say. For other people, the safety of their savings is paramount, according to local bankers. They say that even before bombs hit Baghdad, they saw a move into insured investments by many customers.

The desert wind, called a khamseen, blew into Jerusalem yesterday, spreading a dust so fine it looked as if a smoky gas had enveloped the city. Through the khamseen mist, Dana Avriel made her way to the Jerusalem Convention Center with her 10-month-old daughter to pick up a government- issued gas mask and a contraption called a "protective carryall for toddlers" to use should Saddam Hussein ever unleash his deadly chemical gas on Israel....

Even as some people across the region are buying gas masks and stocking up on antibiotics that they think will save their lives, experts are saying those steps won't save anyone from bioterrorism. "I'd like to tell you to have an antiterrorism kit with you at home, but I don't know what that kit should have in it," said Maria Smith, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency in Harrisburg. "There's very little that individuals can do," said Luciana Boria, a physician at the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense.

As Israelis marked the start of the Jewish New Year yesterday, they were wary of new violence linked to last week's terrorist attacks in the United States. For the first time in Israeli history, armed guards were deployed at every synagogue. Black-clad members of police antiterror units, carrying submachine guns, rode motorcycles down Jerusalem's Jaffa Road, temporarily renamed "New York Street" to show solidarity with the United States. As they did a decade ago, during the Persian Gulf war, Israelis prepared their gas masks, fearing attack from Iraq or other Arab nations.

Journalists in Saudi Arabia, reporting live for network television, grab gas masks as the air raid sirens whine. Civilians in Israel sling gas masks over their shoulders as they go off to work or the market. But are the gas masks enough protection if Iraq should resort to chemical warfare? Not necessarily. It would depend on whether Iraq would be spewing the air with nerve gas or with mustard gas. And there's no way of telling - until it's too late. "Nerve gas can be absorbed through the skin or the respiratory tract.

It is hot, uncomfortable and suffocating - like a heavy rubber octopus enveloping the face. Clad in it, the wearer can scarcely see, can barely be heard and feels slightly bowed by its weight. Lately, though, in local Army-Navy stores, despite all its discomforts, it has been a red-hot item. It is the venerable, ominous gas mask. Born of the foul trenches of World War I; resurrected now, apparently by fears of chemical warfare in the Persian Gulf, gas masks - as well as some other military goods - are selling out at Army-Navy stores throughout the Philadelphia area.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - Lee Westwood's trip here from Houston on Sunday night didn't exactly get off to the smoothest start. But the good news is, it finally got off. When his flight left the ground, it didn't take long to figure out something was wrong. In this instance, the sure sign was smoke in the cabin. "So the pilots donned the gas masks or whatever, oxygen masks, and turned it around fairly quickly, quicker than you would do normally and brought it down fast," Westwood recounted yesterday at Augusta National, where he will be trying to win his first major starting tomorrow.

SHOTS RANG out shortly after dawn outside the schoolhouse where Army veteran Joshua Levy was stationed, helping to take back the Iraqi town of Baqubah, which had been overrun by insurgents. Levy's infantry squad lost a couple of people that day in 2007, one of the worst battles he'd seen. A day after President Obama spoke from the Oval Office to announce the end of combat operations in the seven-year war in Iraq, Levy - a four-year Army veteran - was among a group of local Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who visited the Philadelphia Zoo yesterday to reflect on their experiences, discuss Obama's decision to pull out combat troops and learn about benefits provided to veterans.

Charles Goldberg, 87, of Wynnewood, chairman of I. Goldberg, the venerable Army-Navy store on Chestnut Street, died of a heart attack yesterday at Bryn Mawr Terrace. For more than 50 years, Mr. Goldberg presided over three floors of merchandise that at any given time included Norwegian helmets, World War II Soviet overcoats, bobblehead Marines, Royal Air Force bush jackets, German army nightshirts, and gas masks - as well as practical rain ponchos and camping gear. Since 2004, Mr. Goldberg, who had Parkinson's disease, worked on the lower level with the military-surplus inventory.

WE AREN'T sleeping - yet - in the basement shelter here in Netanya, Israel. But in northern Israel, they are. The rockets haven't yet fallen here, but more than 1,000 have in the north. The Home Front Command has told us who live in the center of the country to be on high alert and always near a shelter. From the time the sirens sound, we shall have just one minute to get into a shelter, under a stairwell or lie down on the ground before the rockets hit. In the north, people have been told to stay in their shelters round the clock.

Despite the war in Iraq, the Tikvah Tour for Israel, a rite of passage for some 11th-grade students, is still scheduled for August. We have decided to allow our 17-year-old son to go. Our son will climb Masada, swim in the Dead Sea, meet an Israeli family in its home, and go to a disco in Jerusalem to socialize with other youths. About 2,500 teenagers from all over the world will be visiting at the same time, but it looks like fewer from the United States will take part than in previous years.

As U.S.-led forces advance on Baghdad, Israel is looking again at western Iraq with an eye on its own security. "We still do not know exactly where the missiles are and how much the coalition forces control western Iraq," a senior defense official said after a parliamentary briefing this week by Brig. Gen. Yossi Kupperwasser, director of Israeli army intelligence. "It is still too early to determine whether the danger has passed. " Kupperwasser told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that the chances of a missile attack on Israel from western Iraq remain small.

Add these modern-day concerns to the list of such normal childhood fears as monsters and dark bedrooms: nuclear bombs and chemical weapons. That's what many of the children in Kate O'Shea's fifth-grade class at Wissahickon Charter School said they worried about these days. Also preying on their minds are ghastly images of oil fields blowing up, bombs bursting over Philadelphia, and relatives in the military getting killed. These 10- and 11-year-olds worry, too, about Iraqi children.

Critics are asking whether the military's equipment and training would protect U.S. forces from biological or chemical weapons in a war with Iraq. Sens. Russell D. Feingold (D., Wis.), Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.) and six other senators yesterday expressed strong concern in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "We are concerned that . . . training and preparedness for confronting the harrowing threat of chemical and biological warfare lags behind the pace of deployment" of forces, the letter said.

Concerned and confused, Philadelphia-area residents filled shopping carts with duct tape, plastic sheeting and bottled water yesterday, and contemplated the grim possibility they might have to seal themselves in their homes to ride out catastrophe. People said they were acting on recommendations issued by federal authorities to prepare for chemical, biological or radiological attack. The run on supplies began after the government upgraded the nation's threat level last week from yellow to orange.

William "The Refrigerator" Perry will make his pro boxing debut Feb. 2 against Eric "Butterbean" Esch. Perry is 39, Esch 35. The fight will take place at the Grand Casino in Gulfport, Miss., the casino announced. Perry, the popular former NFL defensive tackle, became a household name during his rookie year with the Chicago Bears in 1985. He went on to play for the Eagles in 1993 and '94. In other boxing news: It appears the long-awaited bout between Oscar De La Hoya and Fernando Vargas for the WBC and WBA junior middleweight championships will be held May 4 in Las Vegas.