Star Staff Writer
Around 1:15 a.m., an air monitor alarm sounded in the chemical lab, which is separate from the building where M55 rockets filled with GB nerve agent are being destroyed.
A backup system confirmed the presence of GB, or sarin, in the room.
The room was empty at the time, though there were workers in other parts of the lab. Army officials said nobody was exposed, no other air monitors indicated a problem, and within minutes, no more agent was detected.
“The agent reading was very low and did not pose any risk to our workers, the community or the environment,” said Timothy Garrett, the Army’s project manager at the site in a statement.
There is no known source of GB in the room, and officials do not know how it got there.
“That’s one of the great mysteries of life at the moment,” said Mike Abrams, spokesman for the Anniston Chemical Agency Disposal Facility. “I wish there was something more definitive that we could say at this point.”
Despite the open questions, operations did not stop.
“It has not shut us down,” Abrams said.
Thursday night, the facility completed a mini-burn in the furnace that incinerates rocket parts. The mini-burn is a precursor to trial burns that will show whether the facility is meeting state and federal emissions and destruction standards.
Friday, workers processed more than 400 rockets. The facility burned more than 100 gallons of sarin, completing the first trial burn for the liquid furnace, which burns the nerve agent that is drained out of rockets.
The results of the trial burns will not be available for a few months, Abrams said.
The incinerator was built to destroy the 661,000 chemical weapons stored at the Anniston Army Depot. It began live operations Aug. 9.