Chemical incineration has been suspended at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Utah while workers repair a leaking liner in a tank that holds fluid byproduct from the plant, the Associated Press reported last week (see GSN, Sept. 3).

The repair, as well as other routine maintenance work, is expected to take one month to complete (Associated Press/KSL TV, Sept. 5).

Meanwhile, emergency responders in Tooele were scheduled to hold a drill yesterday to test their response to an accident or terrorist attack at the chemical weapons depot.

The simulation — part of the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program’s annual training exercise — was scheduled include two highly visible incidents at the same time, according to Wade Mathews, public information officer for Tooele County Emergency Management.

About 500 people were to be involved in the exercise, according to the Tooele Transcript Bulletin (Karen Scott, Tooele Transcript Bulletin, Sept. 9).

Tooele County’s Mountain West Medical Center also recently acquired a mobile decontamination unit.

“We can take this trailer wherever the individual is.  Before we had the trailer, persons who were contaminated by chemicals or other agents had to come to the hospital for help,” according to Kip Thompson, head of the hospital’s decontamination team (Mary Hammond, Tooele Transcript Bulletin, Sept. 9).

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