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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Poor oversight, communication cause Depot incident

By AMYJO BROWN of the East Oregonian
ajbrown@eastoregonian.com


HERMISTON — Multiple failures of procedure and communication put two workers at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in danger of chemical agent exposure earlier this month, according to a report distributed to U.S. Army officials and state regulators late Monday.

It is unlikely that the depot will be allowed to destroy chemical weapons this week, said Dennis Murphey, after he read the report. Murphey is the administrator for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality’s chemical demilitarization program.

“It’s not going to happen, there’s no way,” Murphey said.

Murphey said he was briefed Monday by depot officials and is still reviewing the report, but that he expects more to be done than what was recommended to ensure such an event does not happen again.

According to the report, disciplinary action is recommended for the two maintenance workers who entered a wrong door and allowed traces of deadly sarin vapor to escape filter units earlier this month.

The two unidentified workers, both male and wearing minimum protective gear, meant to test a motor Dec. 1 in the heating and cooling system for the plant, which operates separately from filtering units that clean the furnaces. Instead, the workers entered the wrong door and unclamped a working filter unit.

The workers, the report said, undertook work they were not supposed to do. They also did not follow procedures correctly, ignoring markings on the door warning them from entering.

The employees were not exposed to the chemical agent and there was no release into the atmosphere, depot officials said.

But, like a similar incident that occurred in September, where workers entered a room storing the chemical agent drained from M55 rockets, multiple layers of oversight failed to protect them. Control room operators did not stop them from entering the room, and leadership personnel on the ground assumed chemical agent readings were low enough for the workers to enter without verifying the room was in fact safe.

And, like the earlier incident, one of the employees was conditioned to enter the wrong door, routinely using it as a shortcut before the depot began processing chemical weapons.

Doug Hamrick, general manager for Washington Demilitarization Company, and Mike Strong, deputy site project manager for the U.S. Army, were in meetings this morning and unavailable for comment.

Washington Demilitarization operates the weapons’ disposal facility for the U.S. Army.

The incident is the third operational error that has temporarily suspended the destruction of chemical weapons since the Army began processing in September.