Depot still exploring source of vapor leak

This story was published Wed, Dec 10, 2003

By Kathleen Gilstrap
Herald Oregon bureau

HERMISTON -- Umatilla Chemical Depot officials said they still are not sure how nerve agent vapor was detected outside a bunker storing GB Sarin gas Monday.

Depot spokeswoman Mary Alice Binder said there is speculation the vapor might have been on protective clothing worn by two workers exiting the structure, called an igloo.

The workers went into the bunker to try to isolate the cause of a vapor leak detected Oct. 1 by monitoring devices.

"Even when you have the door to the igloo open, you have filtering going on from inside the igloo sucking air in," Binder said.

The workers had undergone an initial decontamination procedure outside the igloo and had just gone into a second process of decontamination inside a tractor-trailer-type rig with showers when the vapor outside the igloo was detected, Binder said.

The next reading did not detect any vapor, Binder said.

But operations were halted, and depot employees were told to wear breathing masks and stay in their workplaces. The vapor was reported about 2:20 p.m. At 2:48 p.m., employees were cleared to return to work.

Binder said there was no danger to the public or environment, and no one was injured.

At some point after vapor is detected inside an igloo, workers go in to try and isolate the source by process of elimination.

"That's what workers were trying to do yesterday (Monday)," Binder said. "Today (Tuesday) they continued that process."

The depot, 30 miles south of the Tri-Cities, stores 220,604 munitions and containers filled with 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and mustard agents. The chemicals are set for incineration, perhaps starting as early as next summer.

Almost 50 construction workers claim they were exposed to Sarin in 1999 while building the depot's incinerator. They filed a lawsuit against the Army and Raytheon, which was heard before U.S. District Judge Dennis Hubel at the end of October. Hubel has not yet ruled on the case.

Raytheon, now Washington Demilitarization Group, settled out of court in April.

Shelley Ingram, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, said whether the recent incident gives credence to the workers' claims of exposure to Sarin is a legal question she can't answer.

"But the interagency investigation done by the state indicates those workers were not subjected to any exposures," Ingram said.

Binder said all the reports done by various agencies and the Army after the incident that provoked the lawsuit indicated there was no exposure to chemical warfare agent.

 

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