Emergency workers get training for depot disaster

This story was published Thu, Mar 30, 2000

By Robert Whale
Herald staff writer

"Randy" dropped out of his truck and fell unconscious to the ground.

Moments earlier, the 30-year-old Benton County man was overpowered by a plume of nerve gas wafting in on a breeze from a hypothetical accident at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.

Four men clad from head to toe in plastic suits and breathing through gas masks hustled over to Randy, snipped off his clothes, carried him to a portable shower and sponged him clean of chemicals. Ten minutes later, he was ready for a trip to the hospital.

Wednesday morning's accident was make-believe, and Randy, known as "Ready Randy," is just a 150-pound plastic dummy dabbed with fluorescein, a harmless chemical that glows green under ultraviolet light.

But the techniques Benton County firefighter Ron Bush, Kennewick firefighters Earl Anema and Kim Pauley and Kennewick paramedic Darrell Springer used to decontaminate the dummy at Fire District 2 were real.

After the scrubbing, trainer Larry Harris led emergency services workers to an adjoining room, where he shined a light between Randy's toes and checked under his armpits and behind his ears. On the left side of the dummy's head, the light revealed a small patch of glowing green - a place the diligent scrubbers apparently had missed.

"It just shows how hard it is to get it all," said trainer Todd Dousa.

"I think it was planted there," Springer laughed afterward. "We scrubbed it too well."

The four men were among more than 90 emergency services workers taking part in training offered by the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program through Benton County Emergency Management, the state Department of Health and Emergency Management and Science Applications International Corp. of Joppa, Md.

The impetus for the program is the Army's construction of an incinerator at the Umatilla Chemical Depot that will be used to destroy lethal chemical agents. The incinerator is about 80 percent complete. The depot stores 3,717 tons of aging lethal nerve agents GB, VX and mustard gas that are to be destroyed by March 2005.

"The idea is if something happened at the chemical depot, we would be able to respond," said Milo Straus, program manager for the federally funded CSEPP program.

"In case there is a community emergency that's caused by the release of toxic chemicals during their destruction, our first response will be to set up portable decontamination areas along the evacuation route," said Deanna Westover of Benton County emergency management.

It's been estimated by the Army that in a worst-case scenario, continued storage of the deteriorating chemical stockpile could result in the deaths of more than 10,000 people within a 62-mile radius of the depot.

In addition to responding to an accident involving chemical agents at the Umatilla Chemical Depot, Westover said, the system can be used to respond to any incident in the community, including tanker truck spills or other disasters.

Training is taking place at Kennewick Fire Station 2, Lourdes Medical Center, Walla Walla Fire District 5, Kadlec Medical Center, Benton County Fire District 1, Kennewick General Hospital, Prosser Memorial Hospital and Benton County Fire District 3.

The CSEPP program is run through counties and states that do the emergency planning. Funding comes from the Department of Defense through the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

 

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