Star Staff Writer
The unnamed worker, a 23-year-old lab technician, was not fired for testing the wrong air monitor with diluted nerve agent, they said, but because he “clammed up.”
“People will make mistakes,” said Tim Garrett, Army project manager at Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal Facility. That “he was not truthful immediately, was the problem.”
The alarm caused the lab at the facility to be evacuated late last Thursday night.
“We knew fairly quickly that it was not a question of agent migrating from another location,” said Bruce Williams, site project manager for Battelle, which operates the incinerator’s lab. But, he said, “we have to believe the instruments until it’s proven otherwise.”
There were no sources of airborne agent in the lab, he said.
An investigation launched Friday determined that sarin had been injected into the air monitor, but it was not known who had done it until the worker confessed Monday, officials said.
Officials said the technician was a good worker. But in such a sensitive operation, where deadly chemicals are handled daily, reliability is paramount.
“We’re very strict with respect to the quality and reliability of the people doing this job,” Garrett said.
Officials said they believed the worker would have come forward had he thought anyone’s safety had been at risk.
The incinerator was built to destroy the 2,253 tons of chemical weapons, including nerve and blister agent, stored at the Anniston Army Depot since the 1960s.
The facility is in the middle of agent trial burns to prove whether it is meeting federal and state environmental standards.
Since operations began Aug. 9, workers have processed about 12,300 M55 rockets filled with sarin, and burned about 13,500 gallons of sarin.