The Nerve of It All as Dugway Looses Vial of Deadly VX Nerve Agent

An overnight lockdown, triggered when a vial of the deadly VX nerve agent went temporarily missing, was lifted yesterday January 27 at Utah’s sprawling, 801,000-acre Dugway Proving Ground. Officials at the remote Army installation, 90 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, ordered gates closed at 5:24 p.m. January 26. Up to 1,500 employees of Dugway, military personnel, contractors and civilian workers, were forced to stay the night. A Dugway spokeswoman said the lockdown was ordered after a routine inventory of sensitive material in the chemical laboratory ... discovered a discrepancy between the records and the agent on-hand. As a precaution, the commander immediately locked down the installation and began efforts to identify the cause of the discrepancy. The vial was located, uncompromised, at 3 a.m. January 27 within the facility. Dugway officials did not specify exactly where the vial, containing less than one milliliter, or roughly a quarter-teaspoon of the agent, was found — nor did they detail how the vial had gone missing in the first place, or whether anyone was being disciplined as a result of the incident. Dugway houses small amounts of various chemical and biological warfare agents for defense testing purposes; it also is a prime Army base for testing of an array of conventional military weaponry and ammunition. In another incident, the Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Macon, Georgia, will work to address and correct safety violations it was cited for by a federal workplace inspection agency, base officials said January 26. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration notified the center the week of January 23 it would issue up to 50 violation citations. The center commander said the violations would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, improvements would be made, and added safety would be a high priority. Serious violations include workplace areas with high concentrations of lead on surfaces, chemicals such as chromium in the air, expired medical supply kits, and workers who lacked knowledge about specific hazardous materials, according to OSHA documents.