Lawyer claims Army hid illness's cause

This story was published Tue, Dec 19, 2000

By Mary Hopkin
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON - The lawyer representing 18 Raytheon workers who say they were exposed to deadly nerve gas claims the Army covered up the cause of their illness.

The workers filed a lawsuit against the Army and Raytheon Demilitarization Co. in July following an incident at the Umatilla Chemical Depot on Sept. 15, 1999, when a mysterious odor caused the evacuation of 800 depot workers.

Thirty-six workers were taken to the hospital because they were feeling ill and having difficulty breathing.

Portland attorney James McCandlish, who represents the 18 employees, said Monday that he has proof the Army knew deadly sarin and mustard gases caused the problems, and that the Army deliberately covered it up.

"As a result, the 36 victims that went to the hospital were never decontaminated and failed to receive the immediate treatment needed to combat the effects of these insidious chemicals," McCandlish said in an update to a 300-page investigative report he released in July to support the lawsuit. "All have permanent lung damage."

Since the incident, Army officials have consistently denied workers were exposed to any chemical nerve agent that is stored at the depot.

Initial reports of the cause of the fumes varied, ranging from either paint or epoxy fumes. But federal safety officials said that possibility was unlikely because there were no open barrels of solvent at the time of the 11:30 a.m. accident.

Later, Raytheon blamed the incident on fumes from battery acid.

Then a laboratory report released in November 1999 said the active ingredients in pepper spray were found on the workers' clothing and in samples taken from the building where they were working. Neither the Army nor Raytheon, now known as Washington Demilitarization Co., have confirmed that pepper spray caused the odor.

McCandlish said the workers he represents were sent to Good Shepherd Community Hospital in Hermiston after being overcome by toxic vapor while working a few hundred feet from the southeast corner of K Block, where chemical weapons are stored.

McCandlish said all the workers have suffered symptoms similar to those experienced by victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin attack, and that the symptoms are consistent with mustard or nerve gas exposure.

Some of the workers still are suffering from symptoms, ranging from dry coughs to severe asthma attacks, choking, convulsions and chronic fatigue syndrome, he said.

But none of the workers was treated for chemical exposure at the hospital because the symptoms did not indicate chemical exposure, said Ken Franz, emergency room nurse manager at Good Shepherd.

"If it wasn't for the fact that these people were from the depot, we wouldn't have even suspected chemical exposure," Franz said.

Franz said the workers' symptoms mostly consisted of a raspy cough. There were no vision problems reported, only light-headedness and a cough - not symptoms that necessarily would suggest chemical exposure.

"If we would have thought it was serious, they wouldn't have been allowed in the hospital," Franz said.

McCandlish's updated report also says that because of his investigation into the incident, the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality is scrutinizing the Army more closely.

"If this information is correct, then clearly the Army and the state have failed miserably to protect on-site workers," said Karyn Jones, Hermiston president of the citizen group, GASP - Group Against Social Predation. "I don't know if this has been a deliberate cover-up or incompetence or a combination of the two."

Representatives from the Army and DEQ were not able to comment Monday because they were waiting for official responses to McCandlish's claims from their lawyers.

Raytheon Constructors Inc. was cited in 1999 for failing to have medical personnel on hand during the incident. But in September an administrative judge said the company had given its workers proper medical attention during the incident.

The Army stores 3,717 tons of aging lethal nerve agents at the depot, eight miles west of Hermiston. Since storage began, the Army says, there has never been a release of nerve agent outside the 89 concrete bunkers where the weapons are stored.

 

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