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Friday, June 26, 2009
Lab Slow To Fix Fire Hazards
By John Fleck
Journal Staff Writer
The National Nuclear Security Administration and Los Alamos National Laboratory have been slow to fix fire safety problems identified in 2006, according to federal investigators.
The delays “increased the risk of injury or loss of life” and raised the chances that hazardous and radioactive contamination could escape in a fire, according to the Department of Energy's Office of Inspector General.
The lab's top fire official Thursday acknowledged that the problems, identified during a 2006 review, were slow to be fixed, but that all the serious ones have now been resolved and the rest are on their way to being fixed.
“I believe we're safe,” said Jim Streit, the lab's fire protection division leader, “and we're going to make some additional improvements to make it better.”
The Inspector General's Office reviewed a long list of fire safety problems identified in 2006, when a team led by Bechtel Corp. took over management of Los Alamos from the University of California.
The review found 812 “fire protection deficiencies,” ranging from improper testing of a fire protection system in a lab cafeteria to inadequate fire escapes in a 50-year-old lab administration building.
Auditors from the Inspector General's Office found 59 percent of the problems had not been fixed, according to a report released Thursday.
Since the report was completed, the most serious problems, including the cafeteria fire system and the lack of proper fire escapes have been fixed, according to Streit. In the case of the fire escapes, workers have simply been moved out of two floors of the old building and into newer accommodations.
But Streit acknowledged that some problems, including the replacement of an obsolete fire alarm panel in the lab's plutonium building, will have to wait until federal funding is available to fix them.
“We have to do the best we can with the funding we get,” Streit said.
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