Some Call Arms Incinerator Atoll Home

Every visitor to remote Johnston Atoll, a tiny low-lying coral island in the South Pacific, must prepare for chemical warfare.

Every visitor is given a gas mask and carries a nerve gas antidote in a syringe, which he must be ready to use within seconds of an exposure alarm sounding.

It is here, 720 miles southwest of Hawaii and in an otherwise idyllic Pacific setting of palm trees and coral islets, that the United States has built the world’s largest chemical weapons destruction station.

In the first-ever media tour to the remote atoll U.S. Army staff recently assured reporters that the operation is safe.

So safe that 79 missiles with the lethal nerve agent Sarin were burned while the group of 80 reporters visited furnaces, each wearing on his belt a gas mask and syringe pouch.

During one of the tours, a temperature fluctuation in one furnace chamber forced a plant shutdown for 44 minutes.

It was one of the many nagging glitches which have kept the $340-million incinerator operating for only 24% of the time expected.

Six times since trial burning began in June, contamination alarms have sounded throughout the facility, only to prove to be false readings. Some conveyor belts within the complex that carry non-lethal munitions parts have repeatedly broken down.

“When the plant operates, it operates very well. However, we are seeing more problems than we had expected,” Charles Baronian, technical director of the U.S. Army’s chemical disposal program at Johnston, told a briefing.

“Because the problems are mechanical, I would primarily characterize it as a design flaw, but not a basic flaw.”

Baronian stressed that the breakdowns do not endanger safety and mostly occur in conveyor belts and other transfer points. Shutdowns occur mainly because site managers take no chances.

On the atoll are 54 storage bunkers, most brimming with missiles and mortars filled with chemical gas and liquid.

Nerve agents such as Sarin, which are odorless and colorless, can seep through clothing and skin, restrict breathing, cause involuntary urination, convulsions and finally death.

Mustard gas raises watery blisters hours after contact and inflames the nose and throat.

All the atoll’s 1,400 residents carry gas masks and walk around with a pouch containing a syringe filled with a nerve gas antidote that must be injected within seconds of an exposure. Masks must be fitted within nine seconds.

Throughout the island, automated detectors take 29,000 readings daily from 106 monitoring stations. They scan the air in workplaces and around the island, sounding an alarm when they detect the presence of nerve agent or blister gas.

Despite a feeling that the possibility of death is only a malfunction away, life is still pleasant on Johnston.

Palm trees and wire fences, softball fields and decontamination rooms, armed military police and a nine-hole golf course--they are the contrasts of the atoll.

The constant breeze through the palm trees and the beauty of the setting hide the fact that the atoll is not a resort.

One section of Johnston Island, the largest in the atoll, is sealed off due to a large spill of Agent Orange.

In another area, the failed launch of a nuclear missile left plutonium in the water.

But this does not always bother its residents, who are mostly from the United States working under contracts of six months to one year.

“We’ve got a six-lane bowling alley, movies every night, and softball is really popular,” said Curtis Rodgers, a civilian technician. “A lot of people fish out there. Scuba diving is excellent, and you can sail and water ski.

“I’ve been living on the island two years and if I thought there was any danger I wouldn’t be here.”