Counties stick with CSEPP meeting moratorium

This story was published Fri, Feb 4, 2000

By Terry Hudson
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - Umatilla and Morrow county officials will stick with a moratorium on meetings about the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program - at least until they can meet Feb. 14 with the director of Oregon Emergency Management.

County commissioners began the moratorium Jan. 6, a week after the Alert & Notification System - run by Oregon Emergency Management and CSEPP - mistakenly activated sirens and readerboards falsely warning of a chemical accident at the nearby Umatilla Chemical Depot.

The commissioners agreed to re-evaluate the ban after three weeks.

"Today marks the fifth week since the false alarm," said Umatilla County Commissioner Dennis Doherty. "That event presented another wake-up call to our counties about the state of our emergency preparedness. If you keep on doing things the same way, you keep on getting the same results.

"We're looking for ways to improve the program. I am hopeful, but I'm not ready to say I'm optimistic."

Morrow County Judge Terry Tallman announced the decision to continue the moratorium during a press conference Thursday at the Umatilla Electric Cooperative in Hermiston.

"The message we were trying to send was we did not want business to continue as usual. We wanted to see change," he said.

The moratorium is on multiagency meetings on the CSEPP program. Specifically, that means meetings with CSEPP-connected members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Oregon Emergency Management.

Myra Lee, director of the Oregon Emergency Management agency, plans to be in Pendleton at the justice center Feb. 14 for an 11 a.m. meeting with state, county and CSEPP officials. The moratorium will be one of the topics discussed.

Chris Brown, the CSEPP coordinator for the state, voiced his disappointment following Thursday's press conference.

"At the management level, having these meetings is one of the ways we get things done," he said. "Like it or not, that's what we have to do. Without the counties' participation, that process has stopped. It makes it difficult when we're less than a year out to reach emergency preparedness."

Local officials have been frustrated with problems with the system designed to warn area residents in the case of a chemical weapons accident at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, the most recent being the false alarm that included instructions in Spanish saying there was an actual emergency at the depot.

"The problems are primarily a management failure," said Morrow County Commissioner Dan Brosnan. "The program has had 10 years to succeed. It's time to force a change in the system. I still have the same concerns I had a month ago.

"This process is bureaucracy-driven from the top down and I believe strongly it should be done from the local side on up."

Doherty has complained there are many interagency meetings, attended by state, federal and local officials, but interagency responsibilities are too loosely defined.

During Thursday's meeting, county CSEPP officials touched on progress that has been made in a month.

Meg Capps, Umatilla County's CSEPP program manager, said in light of the Dec. 30 false alarm, an independent contractor will run verification tests on several components of the notification system. Those components will include the control units that run the sirens and readerboards, the sirens, tone alert radio infrastructure and phone and radio systems.

Capps said officials are working on the parameters of the verification testing and will soon sign an independent contractor.

"Once we get a contract signed, it will take about 60 days to get answers," Capps said. "We will make those findings public as soon as we get the results."

Casey Beard, the Morrow County CSEPP coordinator, reported that 3,000 tone alert radios are now being stored in Hermiston. Radios are being tested before full-scale distribution.

Another 5,920 are in transit from a manufacturing facility in Hong Kong. A total of about 17,000 will be distributed in Umatilla and Morrow counties.

"Until they are in place, we don't have an operational system," Beard said.

 

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