LATEST NEWS
Friday, December 3, 2004
Depot suspends
weapons destruction
By AMYJO BROWN
of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — Umatilla Chemical
Depot officials halted destruction of sarin-filled M55 rockets Thursday after
two workers entered a wrong door at the disposal facility and allowed trace
amounts of the nerve agent to escape filter units Wednesday night.
The employees were not exposed to the chemical agent, and there was
no release into the atmosphere, officials said. However, results of medical
tests on the workers have yet to be released.
Sarin, also known as GB, is a clear, colorless liquid used in chemical
warfare. If inhaled or touched, it attacks a person’s nervous system and
is usually fatal.
Depot spokeswoman Mary Binder could not be reached for comment this
morning.
Washington Demilitarization Co. spokesman Rick Kelley said this morning
that power outages at the Depot were making communications difficult, and
he didn’t know if the medical tests had been analyzed yet.
Washington Demilitarization operates the disposal facility for the
U.S. Army.
But, Kelley said, depot officials are confident the workers were
not exposed.
“They weren’t in the room very long, and the air monitorings didn’t
increase until several minutes after they were out of the room,” Kelley said.
The two unidentified workers, both male and wearing minimum protective
gear, were preparing to test a motor in the heating and cooling system for
the plant, which operates separately from filtering units that clean the
furnaces.
At about 8:30 Wednesday night, the workers entered the wrong door
and unclamped a working filter unit instead of the one they intended to repair.
“Although the (filter) door was not opened, unclamping it allowed
agent vapor to migrate into the adjacent room,” said Steve Kirkendall, WDC’s
plant manager.
After unclamping the filter, the workers left the room to get additional
help as is consistent with procedure, Kelley said. The plant’s air-monitoring
system then detected low levels of chemical agent in the room.
Workers wearing a higher level of protection then returned and placed
the filter unit back into service, Depot officials said. Within minutes,
the agent vapor was drawn back into the filter unit.
The incident is the second of its kind to occur since destruction
operations began at the Depot in September.
About a week after processing started, two workers also took a wrong
turn and entered a room they should not have, one storing the tanks containing
liquid sarin drained from the rockets.
After that incident, workers were briefed in detail about the event
and procedures were changed and made more strict, according to depot officials.
Why it happened a second time is still under investigation, Kelley
said.
“They went in and did not look at some of the markings on the door,
particularly the agent boundary markings,” Kelley said.
Dennis Murphey, administrator for the Oregon Department of Environmental
Quality’s chemical demilitarization program, said the agency is not conducting
its own investigation, but is following that of the facility’s.
“We thought the measures they had implemented (after the first incident)
would prevent this from happening,” he said. “What I need to see from them
is detailed information, the fundamental reasons for what happened.”
The destruction of the chemical weapons was expected to be on hold
at least through the weekend, Kelley said.