An official at the Anniston Army Depot has declined Calhoun County's request to shift to the Army the responsibility for sounding the warning sirens in the neighborhoods that would be the first affected by a chemical release.County officials, who responded to the decision with a stinging letter, say they want the change because under the current protocol, warning the residents in these areas before they would be under a toxic cloud is impossible in certain circumstances.
If the Army were to switch on the sirens in the initial moments of an incident, the county says, moments would be saved in which residents could take shelter or evacuate.
"What the Army is really telling Calhoun County is 'we won't help those individuals near the depot gain critical minutes to protect themselves by turning on the sirens because we would be taking responsibility,'" wrote Mike Burney, director of the county emergency management agency.
"'If a chemical plume gets off post, it's Calhoun County's problem,'" Burney wrote in a letter addressed to Lt. Col. Bruce Williams, commander of the stockpile.
In a letter of his own last week, Williams wrote that the county's proposal "increases the risk to the community as a whole." Williams said that, during the first minutes of an accident, depot emergency personnel would be tied up with initiating a response to the release and attempting to prevent it from entering the off-post community.
Moreover, Williams told Burney that new full-time workers recently hired by the EMA "ensure that your agency can make timely notification to your population at risk."
This back-and-forth is most recent in a series of exchanges on the issue of alert and notification, which in itself is merely a chapter in the disputatious saga of preparing Calhoun County for the unlikely event of a chemical weapons release.
During an accident, the staff at the depot emergency operations center has five minutes to notify EMA workers at the state and six counties. Those EMA workers then have eight minutes to alert the affected communities so they can tune to radio and television stations for emergency instructions.
However, depending on the nature of the accident, and wind and weather conditions, a plume can creep over the depot fence line in much less than 13 minutes. For instance, modeling using conditions on an average day last summer showed that agent could reach these zones in six or seven minutes, according to Brian Lazenby, spokesman for the county EMA.
In his letter, Burney rejected an Army proposal to streamline the notification process by having depot personnel immediately alert the county EMA - a procedure Williams said would cut down the lag in notification to "almost nothing."
This would require developing a pre-determined set of recommendations for residents in the pink zones to either take shelter or evacuate. Williams said this is possible because decision-making flexibility is limited due to the time restraints.
"You can pretty much eliminate evacuation 98 percent of the time," he said.
But Burney accused the Army, in this proposal, of "demanding that Calhoun County ditch all of its own safety procedures and do exactly what the Army says, no matter how incredible the message Calhoun County has received may be." He said the county agency has to be able to perform a "sanity check" and "verify the situation" after they receive notification of an accident.
Burney also accused the Army of making a decision based on concerns about its liability, a charge Williams called a "red herring."
"If something happens with a chemical weapon in this community, I'm sure the Army will understand its responsibility," he said.
Another alternative proposal that appears to have fallen by the wayside would have the state EMA man a station at the depot emergency operations center. The state worker could begin to notify the counties as soon as news of an accident hit. But Lee Helms, the state agency's director, shot this proposal down.
"It's a bad idea," he said. "It isn't our responsibility."
Williams left open the possibility of working toward a compromise, but added "I'm not going to sign up for something that jeopardizes the public safety."
