Mass destruction of weapons

last updated 8 January 2015

Anniston, Ala.

Officials in Calhoun County, Ala., this week offered gas masks to 35,000 people who live near a new military incinerator for chemical weapons. Nervous residents picked up the gear days before the Army was to begin burning 2,254 tons of nerve agents from Cold War–era rockets and bombs. Military officials said it was far safer to carefully destroy the chemicals than to continue storing them, because of the danger that they could leak or be seized by terrorists. “Every weapon we destroy is one less weapon that gives us grief,” said a spokesman for the facility. Citizens groups asked a judge to shut down the incinerator. “What if they drop something?” asked Haley Joiner, 25, a hairstylist. “Then what? We’re dead.”