FAIRBANKS, Alaska — Beneath a dim morning sky, Jonathan Runstadler trudged across the ice with a long fiberglass tube, some gardening tools and a smattering of plastic lab bottles.
Months earlier, summer breezes had carried wild birds from Asia to this little pond. Now, with the temperature hovering at 9 degrees, Runstadler bored through the frozen surface in search of the seeds of a pandemic.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Saturday January 14, 2006 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 67 words Type of Material: Correction
Bird flu -- A front-page article Tuesday about avian influenza said 8 million Spaniards died from a virulent flu strain in May 1918. The number was based on a 1918 report in the British Medical Journal that was never substantiated. The true figure is unknown, but modern estimates place the death toll from the so-called Spanish flu that year at as many as 50 million people worldwide.
"Ground Zero is what's in birds," said the University of Alaska molecular biologist, who dropped hockey puck-shaped ice samples into a Ziploc bag.
This snowy patch of the Alaskan wilderness sits at the edge of a bird flu outbreak that emerged in Hong Kong in 1997 and has recently spread as far as Kazakhstan, Croatia and Siberia. The virus has ravaged farms in Thailand and felled wild birds from western China to Eastern Europe.
Turkey has become the latest hot spot, reporting at least two human deaths from bird flu since the start of the year -- the first human cases outside Asia.
Since 2003, the virus has killed 76 people in its march across the globe, according to the World Health Organization. More than half died in the last year.
What Americans once viewed as a distant scourge is now just across the Bering Strait. If it arrives in North America, scientists expect to find it first in Alaska, a breeding ground for many migratory birds from Asia.
The bird flu virus, known as H5N1, is the culmination of random mutations and countless viral mixings, producing a strain of influenza completely unfamiliar to the human immune system.
It could be just a few more mutations away from being able to easily infect and spread among people -- the raw ingredients needed to spark a global pandemic. Or it could evolve into a harmless strain.
Its future is uncertain.
The virus is not so different from the common flu that causes fevers and runny noses each winter. Yet it has provoked a degree of fear that belies its mundane origins.
Governments have slaughtered millions of chickens and other poultry. Hospitals are stockpiling Tamiflu and other antiviral medications. Scientists are racing to develop a vaccine.
In Alaska, scientists such as Runstadler are searching for traces of H5N1 in bird droppings left from the summer breeding season. They could be preserved in now-frozen water or soil.
"It's just a matter of time before H5N1 shows up everywhere," said George M. Happ, a biologist at the University of Alaska who is coordinating the state's pursuit of the virus.
