Work at VX unearths deadly nerve agent\nNEWPORT, Ind. -- Workers dismantling a plant where the deadly VX nerve agent was manufactured in the 1960s stumbled onto a tank last week filled with 20 gallons of the chemical agent, Army officials said.\nNone of the workers who found the tank Jan. 19 were exposed to the lethal liquid and none of it was released into the environment, said Lt. Col. Scott Kimmell, commander of the Newport Chemical Depot.\n"We have plans in place for situations like this," he said in a statement Tuesday.\nDepot spokeswoman Terry Arthur said the workers had sealed off the area before work began and were aware going in that they may discover residual VX. They left the area when alarms signaled "that there might be VX present," Arthur said.\nWorkers wearing special gear returned later to take samples of the liquid, and testing confirmed Saturday that it was VX, she said.\nThe VX, which has a consistency of mineral oil, was later transferred into an approved storage container and moved to concrete bunkers at the depot about 30 miles north of Terre Haute where 1,269 tons of VX are stored.\nKimmell said the tank containing the 20 gallons of VX was part of the original manufacturing process. Workers began dismantling the long-idled plant in 1998.\nThe Army is awaiting federal approval to begin destroying the VX stockpile by chemically neutralizing it at a plant built at the depot by an Army contractor.
Study: Porter County ranks high in heroin abuse\nVALPARAISO -- Porter County's rate of emergency room visits related to heroin use ranks third in the nation, whereas its heroin death rate ranked 10th in the country, according to a university study.\n"I knew we had a significant problem, but when we got compared nationwide, it astounded me," said Valparaiso physician Mann Spitler, whose daughter died of a heroin overdose in March 2002. "I felt that the report verified a gut feeling I had about the pervasiveness of the problem."\nThe study by Roosevelt University in Chicago released Tuesday found that the heroin-related death rate in the northwestern Indiana county for people of all ages was 10th in the nation per capita during 2002. Places like the New Orleans, Baltimore and Las Vegas metropolitan areas ranked higher, but Porter County outpaced death rates in areas like New York, Boston and Chicago.\nThe rate of heroin-related emergency room visits by 18- to 25-year-olds ranked third in the nation, behind only the Baltimore and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, according to the study commissioned by Porter-Starke Services and the Community Action Drug Coalition in Porter County.\nAbout nine of every 100,000 Porter County residents die each year because of the drug. Porter County, which the 2000 census found had a population of about 150,000 people, had nearly four times as many drug deaths in 2002 as Marion County, with a population of about 850,000.\nThe report also found that arrests in Porter County for heroin-related crimes grew from 10 in 2002 to 84 two years later.
Report: Crews failed to shut off water in magnesium fire\nANDERSON -- Utility workers turned the wrong valve when they were called to shut off water at a recycling plant to prevent it from continuing to feed a magnesium fire, a city report said.\nThe correct valve had been buried under 8 inches of asphalt, Anderson Water Utility Superintendent Thomas Brewer said in a report Monday to the city's Board of Public Works.\nAuthorities evacuated some 8,000 nearby residents after the fire broke out Jan. 14 at Advanced Magnesium Alloys Corp because of concerns about possible toxic chemicals from the fire's smoke plume.\nA news conference was scheduled by city officials for Tuesday evening to discuss the cause of the fire, which could be seen from miles away and smoldered for days before burning itself out.\nFirefighters did not ask the utility to disconnect water at the plant until nearly 12 hours after the fire started, Brewer's report said. Magnesium becomes explosive when it contacts water, and fires involving it are typically extinguished using dry sand.\nFire Chief J.R. Rosencrans said he did not know why the request to shut off the water was not made earlier. "We would almost have to go through dispatch to see when calls were made," he said.\nWork crews initially turned off the only accessible valve, but later they learned it shut off water to an adjacent building supply store. Workers could not make sure the water was shut off because of the fire conditions, which also made the correct valve inaccessible, Brewer's report said.
