KATU News (OR)
October 21, 2003

Doctor: Army should have done more for Umatilla workers

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PORTLAND - A doctor who treated seven of the three dozen workers who say they were poisoned by sarin while building an incinerator near a chemical stockpile testified that the Army provided "substandard care" by not sending its own doctor to evaluate the men.

The workers were building an incinerator to burn nearly 4,000 tons of chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot near Hermiston, in northeastern Oregon, when they suddenly began to cough, vomit, salivate excessively and have headaches, confusion and blurred vision.

Dr. Carl Brodkin, a specialist in environmental and occupational medicine at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, testified Tuesday that the Army was wrong to rule out chemical exposure in the hour following the Sept. 15, 1999 incident and should have treated the sick workers with sarin antidote and decontamination baths.

"Could this be chemical warfare agent? Of course it could be. This is what chemical agent does ... and in my opinion, it should have been included in the differential diagnosis on Sept. 15, 1999," said Brodkin, who also prepared a report on the incident.

"There's no way in the minutes or hours following the exposure that you'd be able to rule anything out."

The case hinges on who had responsibility for responding to a possible chemical emergency at the construction site - the Army or its construction contractor, Raytheon.

The first two days of trial have focused on the plaintiffs' case; the Army will present its case later in the week.

The plaintiffs' attorney, James McCandlish, said in opening arguments Monday that the Army was negligent in its response to a "major medical emergency."

The Army did not test for chemical agent until three hours after the workers got sick and didn't send a doctor to the scene, instead relying on telephone reports from Raytheon employees, he said.

Workers weren't taken to the local hospital until nearly two hours after the event.

The Army has argued it was not responsible for handling the workers' medical care because paramedics and a company manager at the scene determined the symptoms were caused by industrial fumes and not by the sarin, VX or mustard stored nearby.

James Brennan, an attorney for the Department of Justice, said Monday that Raytheon managers never requested the Army's help and told an Army doctor over the phone that they could handle the situation.

Brodkin, the doctor, said Tuesday that the two Raytheon paramedics who evaluated the workers were overwhelmed and didn't have the specialized medical training to diagnose or treat chemical exposure.

He said the Army, which had a specialized clinic two miles away, should have sent a doctor to the construction site and considered treating the workers with its stock of sarin antidote and mobile decontamination baths.

Victims who are treated with antidote within an hour of chemical exposure have only one-sixth or one-seventh the likelihood of developing long-term side effects as compared to those who are not, Brodkin testified.

Many of the workers say they still suffer from severe symptoms they developed that day.

"The Army certainly had the resources to handle this. The resources were within three to four minutes away by vehicle," he said. "I believe the military's response was inadequate. I believe the care was extremely substandard."

Earlier Tuesday, Raytheon's site safety and health manager Bruce Raymond testified by deposition that the Army specifically told his company not to treat possible chemical exposure cases among its employees.

"We were not to handle or respond to chemical agent-contaminated people," Raymond testified in a deposition read to the court. "The Army had specially trained people" to treat those cases, he said.

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

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