Hermiston Herald
August 26, 2003

Opinion Piece

Karen Spears Zacharias
8/26/03

Psssstt! It’s no secret around these parts that the spirit of Archie Bunker lives on. Just a moment or two with former Hermiston Mayor Frank Harkenrider is enough to make a grown man groan in anguish the way Meathead used to do, or a woman roll her eyes in exasperation, the way Gloria always did.

And just like Archie, Harkie is just the sort of loudmouth folks love to hate.

I gotta admit there’s something endearing about a person who speaks their mind, even if there’s nothing more substantive to hear than a familiar rattle.

On Thursday, Harkie climbed aboard the same worn platform and began barking (YAWN) about the need to burn the 3,717 tons of lethal evils stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Speaking before the Governor’s Executive Review Panel at the National Guard Armory in Hermiston, Harkie said time’s a-wasting. He urged the panel members to stop debating the issues and let the Army get on with the burning.

“We’re spending a pile of money--$250,000 a day in expenses--while we debate things,” Harkenrider said.

In other words, democracy be damned! There comes a time in every politician's life when freedom of speech should be scorned and public involvement in public policy should be discouraged, if not outright ignored. Particularly if the public’s outcry happens to be among members of the Oregon Wildlife Federation or G.A.S.P., the group of  concerned citizens who hope to snuff out the Army’s wick, which they consider to be a dangerous method of ridding the world of nasty-ikys like sarin and VX.

When people like Harkenrider make up their minds about something, nothing short of cannon-fodder is likely to get them to reconsider their position. So most folks, even those tree-hugging environmentalists, don’t get too riled up when Harkie repeats his “Burn, baby, burn” refrain.

But on Thursday, Harkie’s mindless chatter drew audible groans from members of the Governor’s Executive Review Panel when he pooh-poohed an evacuation plan painstakingly drafted and presented by Morrow County Emergency Management team.

Publicly chiding Morrow County’s Emergency Manager, Casey Beard, Harkie said, “Regarding the evacuation plan, you’ll never be able to put it together. You haven’t got a prayer.”

To his credit, or maybe not, Harkenrider wasn’t the least bit reticent about explaining his position.

“There’s 19,426 acres out there that can be put into industrial use and bringing in taxes,” Harkie said.   

Sucker-punched before his peers, Beard kept his cool. But I’m pretty darn certain I saw him roll his eyes at Harkenrider’s comment.

Moments earlier, Beard had explained to the panel that advances in technology, such as sophisticated computer programs, now allow emergency officials to better determine which way a deadly chemical plume might be headed. In some cases, sheltering-in-place with duct tape and plastic isn’t the best means of protecting the public, Beard said. There might be times, given weather conditions and plume direction, where it would be better to evacuate folks in the unlikely event of an explosion of deadly nerve agent.

Beard knows his stuff. He’s a Gulf-War veteran with plenty of first-hand knowledge about chemical warfare. And he’s used that knowledge to work with the Oregon Department of Transportation on developing a three-phase evacuation plan that includes rerouting the endless traffic off Highway 395’s main corridor onto pre-established east-west escape routes. Such a plan requires funding, but Beard is confident that if the Department of Defense would come up with the funding--say oh, $5 million--a safe and feasible plan could be implemented

“Our goal is to evacuate people in two hours or less,” Beard said.

To be fair, Harkenrider wasn’t the only politician who considered a community-wide evacuation to be a poppycock plan. Umatilla County Sheriff John Trumbo pointed out that when hurricanes strike Florida “there are miles and miles and miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic.”

Add to that mix, a puff of VX floating overhead and you can count on mass chaos.

“A lot of people will panic,” Trumbo said.

Trumbo supported getting on with the agent burns.

“We’re ready to rock-n-roll.”

Of course, it should be noted that in event of a disaster at the depot, Sheriff Trumbo will be tucked away in his corner office some 30 miles east of the Immediate Response Zone, clearly out of harm’s way. He might give evacuation more careful consideration if, like Hermiston Police Chief Dan Coulombe, he was having to protect his own backyard.

Coulombe wants to hold off on burns until upgrades are made in the emergency responders communication system. That’s not expected to happen until March, 2004.

The current system is haphazard at best, Coulombe said. During a mock drill in June, emergency responders in Hermiston couldnât communicate with their counterparts in Boardman. If there was a real emergency at the depot today, with the inadequate emergency frequencies currently in place, Coulombe said he couldnât guarantee the public’s safety.

In other words, until emergency responders can better communicate with each other, it might not matter whether folks wrap themselves in duct tape or whether they barrel down the road towards a deadly plume.

It’s pretty obvious there's already a disaster shaping up at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Karen Spears Zacharias is author of the forthcoming book, Hero Mama, by William Morrow Co., HarperCollins Publishers. She writes from her Hermiston home. She can be reached by phone at 541.379.8572 or by e-mail at <zach@uci.net>.