News

ARSENAL FIRE DRAWS CONCERNS

By David Hammer/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thursday, May 19, 2005 8:23 AM CDT

LITTLE ROCK -- The Pine Bluff Arsenal's failure to report a minor fire for a full week has officials concerned that the Army project is not fulfilling its obligations to keep the public informed.

"I was a little surprised it wasn't made known earlier," Sen. Mark Pryor said Wednesday. "I'm going to check into exactly what the rationale was there. But generally, I think they owe it to the community to tell the public when things like this happen."

The Army's Chemical Materials Agency said Tuesday that a small fire broke out for about two minutes on May 11. The destruction of rockets laced with sarin nerve agent was stopped for the rest of that day and all of last Thursday before processing resumed Friday.

The Arsenal is still investigating why certain rockets tend to flare up, commander Col. Tom Woloszyn said Wednesday.

"This was not an emergency, so the public was not notified, but I think we need to reevaluate that," Woloszyn said.

The agency assured the public in a weekly update to the news media that personnel were safe and that the plant's systems reacted as designed, but not until seven days after the incident.

The Arsenal or the contractor handling the weapons incineration did contact elected officials quickly. Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., said he received a phone call from contractor Washington Group International the next morning, but he said Wednesday a delay in notifying the public can allow fear-inducing rumors to spread.

"Maybe they didn't want to incite fear in the public if no chemicals were released, but this is a small community, and instead of letting rumors dictate what happened, I think they would want to notify the public that nothing bad happened," Ross said.

Woloszyn said the Arsenal may never be able to stop rumors, but mayors are their best allies in controlling them.

"In a small community like this, people always go to the mayor, so we notify them out of professional courtesy," Woloszyn said, although he noted that a depot of similar size in Umatilla, Ore., provides daily updates in local newpapers.

Ross said that, despite the public's strong trust for the Arsenal, the chemical destruction process is still relatively new and the public is still concerned about what is happening. "It would seem to me they would want to do a better job notifying the public," he said.

Mayor James "Jitters" Morgan of White Hall said the Arsenal notified him almost immediately, but he also said it was the first time in his 10 1/2 years as mayor the arsenal didn't send out a press release by the following day.

"They've done it for years on what we call leakers -- when there's been something leaking in those igloos," Morgan said. "They've always been good about it, and since they opened up (the chemical weapons incineration process in March) they have had one or two little incidents. They don't hide anything from us."

Mayor Carl Redus Jr. of Pine Bluff, whose father worked at the Arsenal for 34 years, said the local communities have had a special relationship with the arsenal since it opened in 1941 and he trusts it to quickly notify the public if there were ever a real emergency.

"I'm sure that, had the situation represented some kind of imminent danger to anyone, they would have notified the public," he said. "And while vigilance and caution are necessary when dealing with these dangerous blister and nerve agents, I don't think they need to notify the public of every operational hiccup that doesn't pose a danger to the public."

But Pryor said the arsenal's long-standing relationship with the community makes good communication all the more important.

"That Arsenal is almost unique because the local community has been so incredibly supportive," he said. "I encourage the arsenal always to be transparent."

The Arsenal began destroying 12 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile March 29. Arsenal officials promised transparency before the first sarin rocket was burned, and did not shy away from acknowledging minor problems that slowed the process in the first few days.

Since then, information about the process has been released weekly through e-mail updates to news media.