Show Dangerous Depot In Tooele By Jennifer Judd Contributing Writer Salt Lake is at grave risk and is doing nothing to prevent a fatal fallout Can we cope with the death and destruction caused by million pounds of munitions containing chemical agents detonating detonating detonating deto deto- from an earthquake in J. j Tooele County i I attended a U Utah ah Citizens a. a tJ J.- J. Advisory Commission meeting on Chemical Weapons ns Demilitarization Nov 18 to learn whether or not Deseret Chemical Depot is at risk from seismic ity The entire discussion time was spent on the East Great Salt Lake Fault and Mercur Fault which runs under Tooele and Dugway The conclusion after spending 13 hours studying fault maps was there is evidence of earthquake hazard David Dinter Seismic expert estimated the chance of having a large earthquake magnitude 7 in the next 50 years is about 25 p percent percent per per- r- r cent and a quake in excess of 1 G Gis Gis is 33 percent A AI 1 G earthquake is r r. r enough to knock down brick walls people will be killed and significant damage done Dinter said Buildings in Utah are currently designed structurally to Zone 3 specifications A decade ago the Structural Engineers Engineer's Association of Utah considered upgrading Utah to Zone 4 but the prohibitive tive cost of upgrades prevented them pursuing the matter Some engineers voluntarily design new buildings for Zone 4 because Utah has so many active faults Army officials admitted buildings buildings buildings build build- ings at the Weapons Depot are generally designed for Zone 3 but the storage igloos containing deadly nerve gas are not quite to that standard I was assured the underground pipes are and stored adequately but no one was willing to state what code was used in their design The incinerator is designed beyond Code 3 so there was no concern voiced over it The admitted weak spot is the storage igloos When questions were opened up to th the floor I asked if a cost analysis and feasibility study had been done concerning seismic upgrade of the Depot Surprisingly the answer was no In fact one citizen of Tooele said rather than int interrupt the burning of weapons for a couple of years while they built a new facility they preferred to keep burning as quickly as they could to just get the job done It appears the Commission hasn't done any research on this issue Seismic upgrades can be bedone bedone bedone done to functioning buildings ie i.e. Salt Lake City and County Building relatively simply and inexpensively Experts could spend all day predicting whether or not there will be a l major earthquake in the Salt Lake Valley but those predictions predictions predictions are about as accurate as the weatherman My opinion is next time holds a meeting they spend 15 minutes establishing there is a problem and an hour planning how to prepare for or fix it Munitions rockets projectiles and nerve agent exploding is not the kind of firework display I would ever want to see in my life life- time Salt Lake and Tooele are at risk of detonation from a sizeable earthquake and the Deseret Chemical Depot is not prepared |