No more schools in Calhoun County should receive systems that would make them airtight in the event of a chemical weapons accident, according to a federal study.Instead, the study, conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers, recommends a lesser form of protection for schools in Anniston, Oxford, Saks, Weaver and Ohatchee. The findings were presented at a meeting of county, state and federal officials Monday.
County officials, particularly schools superintendents from three of the county’s five systems, reacted swiftly to the news, drafting a letter demanding the highest level of protection. These systems have already been installed in the schools closest to the Anniston Army Depot and its stockpile of nerve and mustard agent and also in Alexandria.
The corps’ findings are not the final word on the subject. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will ultimately decide which, if any, schools will receive equipment that, in the event of an accident, would fill parts of the buildings with clean air so that no contaminated air could enter.
FEMA officials at Monday’s meeting promised a quick decision on the recommendation but gave no timeframe. They gave no indication of how the matter would be decided but did not state definitively that the scientific recommendation would be the sole factor in the final decision.
“This is a meeting to talk about the science and go from there,” said Conrad S. Burnside, a FEMA official.
Toward the end of the tense meeting, the schools superintendents, who have written numerous letters to federal officials asking for the positive pressure equipment, reiterated their demands directly to the FEMA officials sitting across the table as well as in a hastily written letter.
“We will not settle for enhanced shelter-in-place plus filtration as was recommended today,” the letter read. “These schools must receive collective protection (over pressurized with filtration).”
The letter was signed by Jacky Sparks, of the county system, Dr. Stephen Nowlin, of Anniston, Louis Higgins, of Oxford, and George E. Gorey, president of Donoho Schools.
“We’re back to square one on this,” said Sparks, who got thousand of parents to mount a letter campaign on this issue.
At a meeting a month ago, Sparks and the others received a slightly rosier report. FEMA officials presenting preliminary recommendations said that overpressurization was recommended for four of the 14 schools evaluated. All four of those recommendations changed with the final report.
The level of protection recommended by the corps involves sealing the building and adding charcoal filters that would absorb contaminates that penetrate the structure. This level is regarded as a notch below positive pressure protection.
The corps’ recommendation is based on a protection criterion of one death every 2.5 million years. By comparison, the risk of death by lightning strike is one in 10,000, according to John Duncan of the Alabama EMA.
As many at the meeting admitted, science has been an unhappy fit in the, at times, emotional debate over how the community should be prepared for a chemical accident at the depot. The school superintendents voiced concern about how they could make parents comfortable with the possibility that some children in the county would be offered with the highest level of protection while other would have something less.
“Personally, I’m very happy with this,” said Donoho’s Gorey of the recommendation, “but I can’t take this to my parents.”
The federal officials didn’t appear entirely unsympathetic to this point of view.
“We have an issue of science,” said Burnside. “We’re going to have to look at the overall problem.”
