KATU News (OR)
October 21, 2003

Contractor says it was told not to treat Umatilla depot workers

PORTLAND - A military contractor testified Tuesday that his company could not treat chemical exposure at a chemical weapons depot near Hermiston and that the Army told them not to handle such cases.

The testimony, by deposition, came in the second day of a trial in a case brought by chemical workers who say they were poisoned by sarin gas four years ago.

Bruce Raymond was site safety and health manager for Raytheon, builder of an incinerator at the depot that is to burn the chemical weapons stored there.

Raymond said the Army told Raytheon it had the capability to know if chemical agent was drifting toward the incinerator construction site and that the Army was supposed to notify the company when work was being done where the weapons are stored.

"If we encountered a person showing signs of chemical contamination we could not touch that person and were told to call the Army," he testified.

He said the Army medical climic was two miles from the construction site.

In Monday's opening testimony, three of the workers described a chaotic scene in which they were not offered any medical assistance for nearly two hours.

The non-jury trial pits the Army against about three dozen workers who suddenly fell ill on Sept. 15, 1999 and blame sarin gas. Many still suffer from symptoms they developed then.

The Army plans to use the incinerator to destroy the nearly 4,000 tons of chemical weapons - including sarin, VX and mustard - stored at the depot in northeastern Oregon.

The plaintiffs' attorney, James McCandlish, said the Army was wrong to immediately rule out chemical poisoning and was negligent for relying on Raytheon to handle the sick workers.

He also said the Army didn't react quickly enough to the medical emergency.

McCandlish said the Army did not begin testing for chemical agents until three hours after the incident and then waited another 90 minutes before testing the areas where the workers fell ill. Sarin can disperse in as little as 30 minutes, he said, making it impossible to discount chemical exposure.

Three plaintiffs - David Bosley, Brian Zasso and John Tucker - described how dozens of workers inside the half-finished incinerator building began gasping for breath, vomiting and coughing and raced for the open doorway. Some had to be dragged or carried out by others, they testified.

Zasso and Tucker said they went got no help from the first aid station despite requests to be taken to a hospital.

But government attorneys said Monday they were only required to provide medical assistance if they determined chemicals were the cause of the workers' illness. All non-chemical emergencies were to be handled by Raytheon under a pre-construction agreement.

Raytheon, now called the Washington Demilitarization Group, was dropped as a defendant after reaching an undisclosed settlement with the workers earlier this year.

The Army immediately ruled out chemical agent, said James Brennan, attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice. Army employees had entered four bunkers that morning for routine checks and found no leaking weapons, he said.

During cross examination, government attorney Henry Miller said what affected Tucker couldn't have been sarin because Tucker wrote that he smelled an "acidy or noxious odor" - and sarin is an odorless gas.

The first phase of the trial, which is expected to take two weeks, will determine whether the Army was negligent. The second phase would determine any damages.