Last of two parts.
   
The 1985 congressional order to eliminate the nation’s deadly chemical weapons stockpile came without a how-to book or much of a case history.
   
Before then, people had only experimented with deactivating industrial-size loads of nerve and blister agents. Massive furnaces like the ones that will fire up at the Pine Bluff Arsenal next year were tested in the Utah mountains and on a remote Pacific island, far from schools, suburbs and highways.
   
Now, as crews at the Pine Bluff Arsenal and the country’s seven other chemical-storage sites race to eliminate their stockpiles by a 2012 deadline, they’re facing the relatively uncharted challenge of keeping people safe while, nearby, toxic weapons are destroyed.
   
"There was no cookie-cutter plan if you wanted to prepare your area for a chemical emergency," said Cheryl Humphrey, a spokesman for emergency preparedness at a weapons incinerator in Hermiston, Ore. "Here’s the road map of how you get there, all the things you need to do along the way, the equipment you need to have, the training — that didn’t exist."
   
The plans made by emergency workers in Arkansas won’t be put to the test until February, when the $600 million furnace system will begin incinerating 3,850 tons of chemical weapons that have rested in earthen bunkers for decades.
   
The federal government has doled out $723 million since 1989 to prepare communities near the eight stockpile sites in the event something goes wrong but gave no directions on how to spend it.
   
As a result, emergency plans for different stockpile sites vary widely in scope and approach. Some are detailed and meticulous, others loosely structured and open-ended.
   
In Hermiston, for instance, first responders have hand-held devices that can tell them where plumes of deadly chemicals are headed. The devices also tell the locations of disabled people who can’t evacuate on their own.
   
Arkansas first responders don’t have those tools.
   
Wally Hunt, the lead coordinator for Jefferson County’s Department of Emergency Management, said he hopes school buses, kindly neighbors and nursing home vans can be used in a pinch to get everyone out of harm’s way, if necessary.
   
"Sometimes you’ve got to improvise," he said.
   

PROTECTING PINE BLUFF
   
Hunt’s office beside the Jefferson County Courthouse is 20 feet underground; a pressurized bunker designed to withstand tornadoes, floods or chemical clouds. It’s here that area officials and emergency coordinators will meet if a plume of nerve or blister agents ever threatens.
   
At the heart of the complex is a rectangular command center anchored by a long meeting table and bordered by computer monitors. Maps and television screens occupy each corner and a hot-line telephone provides a direct link to the arsenal’s incinerator control room.
   
Classrooms across the hall can change quickly into bunk rooms should people need to stay for days at a time.
   
In these offices, Jefferson County emergency organizers craft evacuation routes, order protective equipment for first responders and keep an eye on the arsenal’s incinerator via a remoteaccess computer link.
   
On a typical day, armed soldiers at the arsenal stand watch over the earthen bunkers where 12 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile is buried. Come February, those soldiers will escort loads of the unearthed chemical weapons to the furnaces designed to render the deadly blister and nerve agents harmless.
   
Planning to keep the 150,000 people living within 35 miles of the Pine Bluff Arsenal safe during the incineration process began as soon as the Army decided to burn chemical weapons there. More than $80 million in federal funds have been spent in Arkansas over the past 15 years to protect the 10 counties surrounding the arsenal that fall under the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, commonly referred to by its initials: CSEPP.
   
To prepare, Arkansas organizers enlisted 800 volunteers, designated 44 emergency response zones, mapped evacuation routes for each zone and have run through plans for countless scenarios.
   
"My favorite phrase is ‘What if,’" Hunt said.
   
Crews recently installed 58 loudspeaker systems within a 35-mile radius of the furnace as replacements for the previous sirens that didn’t have built-in public-address systems.
   
Now the county emergency office is distributing 1,000 new emergency tone radios, updating ones given out in 1997. The radios went to all households in the immediate response zone — a circle 19 miles in diameter closest to the chemical weapons storage igloos and the incineration furnaces.
   
Households in the immediate response zone also get a calendar from the Arkansas Department of Emergency Management each year that features third-graders ’ crayon drawings of disaster scenarios. The calendars also include mail-in questionnaires intended to help the agency track people with impairments who could have trouble evacuating.
   
Three of the seven public schools within 9 1/ 2 miles of the incinerators have overpressurization systems to keep chemical agents out in case of a leak. Plans call for students in the schools that aren’t overpressurized to be bused to safety.
   

IS IT ENOUGH?
   
Despite years of planning and the millions spent, Arkansas’ emergency response plan for a chemical agent release at the arsenal still has holes.
   
Planners admit that the list of those who would need help evacuating is probably incomplete because some disabled people are reluctant to let anyone know about their impairments so they can avoid being targeted by criminals.
   
Television and radio ads pushing awareness of the incineration process and what to do in case of an emergency are broadcast solely in English, leaving out the 315 Spanish speakers living in Jefferson County who speak and understand English poorly or not at all.
   
Arkansas is the only stockpile state where telling people to stay in their homes isn’t heavily pushed in the event of an emergency.
   
People living near the Umatilla stockpile site in Oregon get airfiltration systems designed to provide clean air in case they must stay put when the air outside is tainted with harmful vapors.
   
In Anniston, Ala., gas masks were made available to those in the danger zone, and volunteers canvassed neighborhoods to hand out duct tape and plastic that could be used to seal windows.
   
Another remaining challenge in Arkansas is making sure a pocket of about 200 people living in Jefferson, a tiny community just north of White Hall off Arkansas 365, can find a way out. For residents in a neighborhood sandwiched between the arsenal and a railroad track, the only existing evacuation route could be blocked by a train.
   
But Jefferson County Judge Jack Jones said he’s not worried. As head of county government, Jones would make the final call on evacuations during a disaster.
   
He said he believes the equipment and procedures in place around the Pine Bluff Arsenal rival those of other stockpile sites, even Hermiston with its high-tech hand-held trackers.
   
"I feel like we’re ready," Jones said. "We have most everything we’d need to respond to any situation."
   
Jones’ house sits almost directly across the Arkansas River from the incineration site, and his youngest son goes to work at the arsenal every day.
   
"My mother, brother, sister and all five of my children and all seven grandchildren live in the White Hall area," Jones said. "I would have them move if I thought we couldn’t handle the situation."
   

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
   
On paper, Arkansas’ Jefferson County and Alabama’s Calhoun County look a lot alike.
   
Both counties have large black populations, grapple with poverty and are home to massive stockpiles of chemical weapons.
   
But the communities’ response to news that the weapons would be cooked in their back yards differed in many ways.
   
Lenworth Westbrook is one of Calhoun County’s leaders in the push to beef up safety during incineration at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, where 7 percent of the nation’s chemical weapons stockpile is being destroyed.
   
Nearly $260 million has been spent on chemical-related safety measures in Alabama since 1989. Disposal operations began there in August 2003. At the Pine Bluff Arsenal facility, $80 million has gone toward safety so far.
   
Westbrook and members of his group, United Americans Against Pollution, don’t trust the safety measures put in place for them. Neither do they believe that Army contractors and state emergency workers have done enough to inform the public about potential dangers.
   
"There are still little old ladies who have not heard anything about this. No one has knocked on their doors to let them know," Westbrook said.
   
Brenda Wood, who owns a spa in Anniston, said she and many of her neighbors were scared by the incineration project but have learned to live with it.
   
"When it first came up, a lot of people talked about moving, but they had homes and families and mortgages," she said.
   
Public outreach officer Donavan Mager blames a chemical company’s legacy for the worry that some in and around Anniston feel in regard to incineration. Mager works for Washington Group International, the contractor the Army hired to burn stockpiles at the sites near Anniston and Pine Bluff. Monsanto Co., which produced chemicals in Anniston for decades and then left it polluted with polychlorinated biphenals or PCBs, paid $700 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed in state court by residents and business owners.
   
"I think had it been any other community but Anniston, we probably wouldn’t have these issues," he said.
   
In contrast, few have loudly opposed incineration plans in Arkansas. Many shrug off questions about incineration, saying why worry if they can’t do anything about it.
   
"They’ve got to get rid of it somehow," said Daniel Burrus, who works at a pizza shop within miles of the Pine Bluff Arsenal’s main gate. "I’m not thrilled about it, but we really can’t do a lot."
   
Jewelry store owner David Judkins said he trusts the U.S. Army to keep his hometown of White Hall safe.
   
"I’m sure they researched this for years and did their homework. I realize it’s something that has to be done," he said.
   
The Chemical Weapons Working Group, a Kentuckybased alliance that lobbies against incineration and champions neutralization as a better way to deactivate chemical weapons, has sparse membership in Arkansas, compared with robust numbers near other stockpile sites.
   
Weapons Group Executive Director Craig Williams suspects that economics keep people in southeast Arkansas from getting more involved in what’s going on at the arsenal and pushing for tighter safety.
   
"In Pine Bluff, lots of people are focused on making ends meet and providing for their families. Working two jobs doesn’t leave a lot of time to focus on this, to go to meetings," he said. "It’s a tough place to get opposition to something no matter how crazy it is."
   
Hunt has a different explanation. He suspects that Arkansans are simply comfortable with the arsenal because they’ve lived with it safely for decades.
   
"A large part of our local population is familiar with the arsenal. They’ve worked there," Hunt said. "They say, ‘I’ve been here for 15 years and nothing’s happened.’"