Officials demand evacuation buses in Boardman

This story was published Wed, Mar 10, 1999

By Theresa Goffredo
Herald Oregon bureau

BOARDMAN - It's time once again to get tough.

Umatilla and Morrow County officials on Tuesday reiterated their promise that they won't agree to a plan to incinerate the chemical weapons stockpile stored at the Umatilla Chemical Depot until federal officials provide buses so schoolchildren can safely escape during an accident.

Recently, Morrow County School District officials learned they were not going to get six buses to help evacuate students from Sam Boardman Elementary School and Riverside High School if nerve agents leak from the depot eight miles west of Hermiston.

The current plan for Boardman should a depot accident occur is to evacuate those students west to The Dalles. But the district has only eight buses - not enough to do the job, said Superintendent Chuck Starr.

County and school officials expect to bring up this point Thursday during a meeting with Federal Emergency Management Agency officials in Pendleton.

"Right now, the county plan is to refuse to sign off on the initiation of incineration until the protection of Boardman students has been addressed," Starr said.

"When you're dealing with the lives of 800 students, if the reality does not work just by negotiations, than we've got to play hardball," he said.

Starr said the district has been requesting six buses - at a cost of about $420,000 - since 1992. The schools are about 13 miles from the depot, close enough for the prevailing wind from a lethal nerve agent gas plume to be a threat, Starr said.

But because Boardman is 13 miles from the depot - where 3,717 tons of aging nerve agent are stored - it is not considered in the Army's Immediate Response Zone, which is up to 10 miles out.

FEMA officials always have felt schools far enough from the depot and out of the immediate danger zone would be able to evacuate with existing bus fleets, said Eric Richardson, FEMA project manager.

"It's true. Up to this point, the buses have not been approved for Boardman, and that decision has been linked to FEMA policy," Richardson said Tuesday. "We felt they could evacuate with their existing bus fleets if they make two lifts."

But Casey Beard, director for Morrow County Emergency Management, has maintained The Dalles is too far away to make two trips in a reasonable time frame.

Morrow County officials have submitted a packet of information to FEMA supporting their case for the school buses. Richardson said he has received the packet but has yet to review it.

"Even though the item has been denied in years past, we will reconsider this," Richardson said.

FEMA recently has agreed to supply the city of Echo in Umatilla County with one school bus to help its students evacuate. The city has asked for two school buses for the past eight years to help evacuate students southeast to Pilot Rock during an accident at the depot.

"This is the first FEMA region to approve a bus, and that represents a precedent-setting issue as well," Richardson said.

"We want to augment local readiness - not to create it from scratch. That's why we need to be careful, because the ramifications nationwide could be very expensive."

There are seven other chemical weapons sites across the country where emergency preparedness equipment needs to be bought for surrounding communities.

But as for the school bus for Echo, City Manager Diane Berry said Tuesday that she's heard her town might get the bus but said she's heard that before.

"We are going to keep stressing that we aren't willing to sign off on the incineration project until we have the ability of the school to evacuate," Berry said. "At least I want to know they're ordering one."

 

Copyright 2002 Tri-City Herald. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.