After a temporary delay in destroying the first nerve agents at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, work is under way again.

Now this part of Washington and Oregon and, in a very real sense, the whole world, is moving toward greater safety.

Some of the nastiest, most gruesome and inhumane stuff ever developed by humankind is being voluntarily destroyed.

It is a big event. World class.

Underscore that word class.

The Umatilla Chemical Depot is home to 100,000 M55 rockets, 90,000 of which contain sarin gas. The other 10,000 contain VX nerve agent. But those are now temporary numbers. They diminish daily and will do so for years to come.

The depot stores 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents.

These poisons, developed for military use, cause awful injuries and agonizing deaths.

And they are persistent. It is reported that a farmer in Ypres, Belgium, near the French border, sat down on a tree stump not so many years ago, and arose with painful burns inflicted through his trousers.

They came from some of the poison gas released there during the trench warfare of World War I -- the war that raged from 1914 to 1918. In other words, the gas (in this case, mustard) had lingered in the ring of a tree for the better part of perhaps 80 years. And it was still potent.

Agents like it and much worse are the objects now of a 90-day start up, during which the work load will grow at a steady but deliberate rate.

At full speed, there will still be a long way to go, naturally.

But the work has begun. That is the important thing.

And we and the world will live in a better place because of the wise decision to do away with these kinds of weapons.