Felled by Fumes, Workers Sue U.S. Army for Answers

In a wind-swept corner of northeastern Oregon, 1,000 earth-covered bunkers stretch across the landscape like the evenly spaced squares of a Hershey’s chocolate bar. Antelopes and skittish jack rabbits graze between the mounds.

The U.S. Army stores nearly 4,000 tons of chemicals here, at the Umatilla Chemical Depot--two types of deadly nerve gas and blister chemical. The poisons sit a short walk from the cavernous incinerator that will begin destroying them in 2003.

Almost two years ago, 34 construction workers began coughing, vomiting and gasping for air while they worked in an unfinished incinerator building.

What sickened them remains a mystery.

“Typically, there is some telltale event like a leaking valve or a broken tank. That did not happen here,” said Carl Halgren, the area director of the U.S. Occupational and Safety Administration, which investigated.

Unable to get the answers they want, the workers have sued, claiming the Army covered up a chemical leak, a charge it denies.

Halgren is sympathetic.

“When I looked into the workers’ eyes, I knew they were not making this up. Something happened,” he said. “The sad thing is, I can’t tell them what it was.”

On that September day in 1999, Jim Shaffer watched men stagger past him just before he was knocked to his knees by a violent cough. He crawled to the nearest doorway, vomiting bile, and was pulled out by his friend, Brian Zasso.

“This was a fight for your life to get out. Every breath hurt,” Zasso said.

It was 11:05 a.m.

From that point on, memories and official records of what happened that day diverge. The workers claim conspiracy and neglect. The Army and Raytheon, the company that built the incinerator, recount an efficient response to an industrial accident.

Bruce Raymond, then site safety manager for Raytheon, said his paramedics divided workers based on the severity of their symptoms and cared for them in that order.

The workers did not show the telltale sign of sarin gas exposure--pinpoint pupils--so paramedics treated them for inhalation of industrial fumes, Raymond said.

Zasso, Shaffer and another worker, Tony Kimball, said they went to an emergency clinic operated by Raytheon where they found other construction workers waiting to be treated. Zasso carried Kimball to the clinic because he was too weak to walk.

There, paramedics told them to sit in the sand outside the clinic, the workers say. Zasso said the clinic staff took their names but did not give them any medical care--or water--for more than one hour.

Raymond, who now works in Maryland, questions how sick some of the tradesmen were.

“Most of them just stood around outside talking and smoking cigarettes, arguing about who was going to ride to the hospital with whom,” said Raymond, who was at the scene within 10 minutes of the first call from the construction supervisor to Raytheon’s construction safety manager.

More than one hour later, at 12:22 p.m., vans filled with 34 sick construction workers left for Good Shepherd Hospital, according to Raytheon’s final incident report.

Zasso said the medical staff would not take the workers to the emergency room until he threatened to call the local newspaper on his cell phone.

Lt. Col. Tom Woloszyn, the depot commander, said the workers delayed the trip to the hospital because they insisted on a union driver--a charge the workers deny.

About 40 minutes later, the vans arrived at the emergency room, where the workers were treated for inhalation of an unknown chemical, hospital records show. Three were admitted overnight, Raytheon reports show.

Ken Franz, director of the emergency room, said Raytheon paramedics did not call to warn his staff that 34 patients were on the way. Raymond said his paramedics called ahead three times.

Like the Raytheon paramedics, Franz said his staff immediately ruled out sarin exposure because the workers did not have pinpoint pupils.

Several nurses said later that they got sick from fumes emanating from the workers’ clothing, Raytheon’s final report said. Franz contends that never happened.

Before Army workers could begin testing for sarin gas leaks around the depot, the testing machines needed to warm up. The machines were turned off because all the Army chemical workers were at a retirement luncheon that day, depot commander Woloszyn said.

At 2:20 p.m., more than three hours after the workers fell ill, the Army began testing for sarin gas leaks, according to Army records. Chemical experts tested with mobile machines that use long rubber hoses to suck up air samples. They then checked the samples for traces of deadly nerve gas or mustard chemicals.

Workers took air samples outside the concrete bunkers that store the chemical weapons because they believed traces of toxic gas would be strongest closest to any leaking weapon, Woloszyn said. The tests were negative, he said.

The bunkers are about two football fields away from where the construction workers got sick.

Nearly one hour later--and more than four hours after the incident--the Army tested inside the incinerator building where Shaffer, Kimball and the others were working. But no tests were done in the room where 13 of them fell ill, according to Raytheon records.

Army program analyst Phillip Ferguson, who at the time was responsible for monitoring and testing for chemical leaks, said no one was at the incinerator building to tell him where the men fell ill. He said he had no way of knowing where to take air samples.

He chose three test sites based on wind direction and his own knowledge that sarin gas usually pools at low elevations. He tested in rooms where only one worker got sick--but he didn’t know that at the time, he said.

Woloszyn said 1,200 people--security guards, groundspeople and other construction workers--were working in and around the incinerator building, but only the 34 workers took ill. Everyone would have been affected if it was a leak of sarin gas, he said.

“Chemical agents aren’t selective. They don’t go around and tap some people,” he said.

Nearly two years later, the workers are still fighting symptoms that began that day. The Army agrees the men are sick, but says it is not to blame.

Shaffer, the 55-year-old pipe-fitter, has asthma attacks, violent coughing fits, headaches, mouth sores, blotchy skin, night sweats and depression. He spends 26 minutes a day inhaling vaporized steroids to help him breathe.

A hint of perfume, air freshener or diesel fuel can make Shaffer cough so hard that strangers back away, afraid that he has tuberculosis. For months, his gums bled and the skin on the tips of his fingers peeled away.

Shaffer’s wife, Natalie, reports to her bank teller’s job exhausted each day because his coughing keeps her awake. She changes the bedsheets every three days because they are drenched in his sweat.

“You learn to live with the pain, but it still crushes on you and drives on you. I’m in misery all the time,” he said. “I’m more concerned about my wife’s future than my own. I don’t have one.”

The Shaffers are not alone. Eighteen workers who are still sick sued the Army in U.S. District Court in May. Three have not returned to work. Seven cannot hold construction jobs because they can no longer tolerate breathing industrial fumes. One, Kimball, tried to commit suicide.

Shaffer recently sold the six-bedroom home he built by hand and moved into a one-bedroom apartment off a busy highway to help pay his medical bills.

Kimball, a single father, put his $180,000 house on the market in May. He plans to move with his three teenage daughters into the basement of his parents’ home.

“I’ve been watching my health deteriorate for two years. It’s hell. It’s a living hell,” he said. “I just want to feel like a person again.”