A nerve agent monitor at the Army's chemical weapons incinerator sounded a false alarm early Thursday - the second such alarm there in less than a week.Officials have yet to identify a cause in Thursday morning's case, but one suspect is a hand-held radio used by an employee near a monitor in the facility's medical clinic. Newly opened lab coats are suspected of having tripped the extremely sensitive monitoring equipment last Friday.
Although none of the lethal agent stored at the Anniston Army Depot has been moved to the incinerator, which is being prepared for trial burns in the fall, managers there on both occasions alerted depot emergency officials, who in turn notified off-post officials at the local, state and federal levels.
However, the time it took to complete the notification, coupled with a history of disputes over whether the system can effectively warn those who live closest to the depot, sparked a round of sniping between Calhoun County officials and Army officials Thursday.
"Had this been a level 4 event" (a chemical release that got off the depot) "much of the county would have been covered up with a plume if it had taken this long for us to be notified," said Calhoun County Emergency Management Agency spokesman Brian Lazenby.
The Army contends that because no agent was present, and because notification was done within the one-hour time limit set for a level 1 event, this is an empty criticism.
"What the county EMA told you is highly irresponsible," said incinerator spokesman Mike Abrams. "They are criticizing us when there is no criticism to make. Voluntarily, we are working with the depot Emergency Operations Center to get things prepared for real operations later this year.
"We stumbled," he said of the false alarms, "and while some may use it as a chance to take a cheap shot at us, it is an example of us going out of our way to get ready early."
Replied the EMA's Lazenby, "There's nothing irresponsible about it. The criteria calls for notification within five minutes, and we're concerned that there's not enough time to notify the residents in the pink zones."
The alarm sounded at 1:30 a.m. Incinerator staff notified the depot's emergency operation center 31 minutes later. The Calhoun County EMA was alerted at 2:28 a.m., and notifications were completed a minute later.
Any event above level 1 requires notification of emergency personnel within five minutes.
Army spokeswoman Cathy Coleman said level 1 accidents require notification within three hours. She said an informal agreement has shortened that to one hour.
"That's why we have people making these decisions instead of computers," she said. "People apply all the knowledge they have, and part of that knowledge is that there was no chemical agent on that site."
This knowledge, she said, "allows us the luxury of time to sort things out."
