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United States: Army Removed Umatilla Alarms Technicians at the U.S. Army’s Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon accidentally turned off required alarms during test burns in late September, according to an Army investigation released last week (see GSN, Oct. 15). The alarms link to sensors measuring how quickly chemical agents are fed into the depot’s incinerator, says the investigation report, which is dated Oct. 10. Before the test burn, Oregon had denied the Army permission to accelerate the feed rate. “You don’t want too much agent being burned all at once because then the furnace can’t destroy it all,” said Tom Beam, project senior engineer for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. “But the Army doesn’t want the feed rate at too slow a speed because it slows down the destruction schedule. The trick is to avoid spikes in the feed rate. This alarm system helps spot problems,” he added. The Army contractor at the depot, Washington Demilitarization, may face fines, but, according to the report, the deactivation was unintentional. Technicians reportedly disabled the feed rate alarms after state officials allowed the Army to turn off other alarms that measure exhaust gases (see GSN, Oct. 4). Beam said he does not believe the Army intentionally turned off the alarms, but the workers who disabled the exhaust alarms apparently did not understand their jobs. “Even when they knew they had a problem, they continued on their merry way,” Beam said. “I don’t want to downplay our concern over the incident,” he added. The Army report recommends improving training for incinerator technicians. There was “an immature conduct of operations culture” at Umatilla, according to the report (Associated Press, Nov. 30).
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