Depot leader addresses emergency warnings

This story was published Wed, Feb 2, 2000

By Terry Hudson
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - After a Dec. 30 false alarm, some community officials suggested future emergency warnings should come from the Umatilla Chemical Depot itself.

On Tuesday, Lt. Cmdr. Tom Woloszyn, the depot commander, outlined how the chains of communication are set up at the chemical weapons facility. He was at the Army Outreach Center in Hermiston for the monthly mayors' meeting.

"I have the ability to notify anyone I want to," Woloszyn said. "What I can't do is use the community siren system. We can activate the community siren system, but we're not authorized to do so."

The depot, seven miles west of Hermiston, stores 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents. The Army plans to begin burning the weapons in an incinerator in October 2001.

That activation has to come from area Emergency Operations Centers. Woloszyn said for the depot to activate the community siren system, local jurisdictions would have had to expend all of their capabilities. He also said direct notification to the public has to be requested through the governor.

Now, Emergency Operation Centers in Hermiston, Pendleton, Heppner and the depot are notified through an "all-call" microwave line phone system, operated by Oregon Emergency Management that simultaneously places priority calls into those centers.

Woloszyn said a fax capability will be added to that system in the next two months.

The microwave system is bolstered by a backup "crash" phone system, the commercial phone system and specialized radio systems including short wave, Harris AM radio, military FM radio and Motorola radios.

"Public safety is paramount," Woloszyn said. "We're going to get the word out."

City officials in all of the communities surrounding the depot expressed frustration during and after the false alarm, when key city personnel were unable to get any information on why the sirens were sounding.

The upgraded microwave line is expected to help alleviate that problem.

Woloszyn said the only city with a direct line to the depot is Hermiston, at the Hermiston Safety Center, which is staffed 24 hours a day by 911 dispatchers.

The Hermiston dispatchers handle any emergency communication after hours for the communities of Stanfield and Umatilla.

"The only direct line to a city goes to the Hermiston Safety Center," Woloszyn said. "Everything else goes to county Emergency Operations Centers."

Chris Brown, the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program manager for Umatilla County, is working to get that information to city leaders as fast as possible.

He said the state is in the process of providing combination cell phone/pagers to the mayors of each surrounding community and to other key community officials.

Brown said in case of an emergency, a "blast page" could be simultaneously sent out to all the cell phone/pagers in the notification system.

Brown also reminded those present that the first of the tone alert radios should be distributed soon.

"They should start to go out in early February," he said. "That is the big piece of the Emergency Notification System that is not here yet. All of you will have a tone alert radio in your house and business."

 

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