PORTLAND -- The Army's position, that there couldn't possibly be a chemical leak at the Umatilla Chemical Depot unless it says there is, "is outrageous," said the attorney representing workers who say they were exposed to sarin gas there.

James McCandlish represents the 49 construction workers who claim to have been exposed to sarin while building the incinerator plant that will be used to destroy the 7.4 million pounds of deadly chemical weapons stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot. About 12 percent of the nation's stockpile is stored there.

McCandlish said during closing arguments Friday that the Army had a responsibility to respond when more than 34 workers building the incinerator plant simultaneously became ill on Sept. 15, 1999.

"The government's response was totally inadequate," McCandlish told U.S. District Judge Dennis Hubel.

"They stuck their head in the sand" during a situation involving the most dangerous chemical weapons known to man, McCandlish said.

The weapons are left over from the Cold War and stored in large, rectangular concrete "igloos" that dot the hillside south of Umatilla. Weapons containing the nerve agent sarin, or VX, and the mustard gas shed, are located in K-block, which is surrounded by a double chainlink fence, topped with razor wire.

To minimize the risk of accidents, the incinerator was purposely constructed near K-block, so workers would not have to transport weapons with the deadly agent very far.

And the close proximity is one of the reasons McCandlish can't understand the Army's reluctance to assume any responsibility for not responding quickly with medical help when officials discovered workers were evacuating the construction site and were ill.

McCandlish said they also should have done more thorough testing of the site for chemical agents. Instead, only three samples for each agent were taken inside the building, and the 100-foot-long monitoring tubes weren't long enough to reach deep enough into the building to sample air where the construction workers were working.

McCandlish said the Army seems to operate under an assumption that a leak could never happen at the depot.

In addition, McCandlish said, Army officials testified that the first monitoring tests on the building, which were negative, were invalid because the testing equipment wasn't working properly. After those tests, the Army sent out press releases that stated there had been an incident at the depot, but that it wasn't related to the chemical agents stored there.

Justice Department Attorney James Brennan said the Army was following protocol. After determining there was no leak, it notified the public to avoid any possible panic.

"Are we going to declare a (chemical event) when there wasn't a chemical event?" he said.

Brennan said the Army offered help, but was refused.

The Army calculates for what it calls a "maximum credible event," which is what it believes is the most likely emergency situation that could occur at the depot, he said, and plans for how it will handle the situation.

In the Army's view, during the Umatilla Chemical Depot's "maximum credible event," there would only be two fatalities, he said. And that's what they plan to be able to handle.

"(The depot) has 40 years of having a very safe record, and nothing like this has ever happened," Brennan said. "So what's different now? Maybe what's different is that, in that 40 years, there has never been a major construction site there."

Hubel said he plans to visit the depot Nov. 11 and will make his decision after that. If he rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the trial will go into a second phase, McCandlish said, during which he will attempt to prove the workers were affected by nerve agent.

Raytheon was originally named in the suit, but settled out of court in April.