WHITE HALL — The Army has formed a task force to look into five small fires that recently occurred at chemical-weapons destruction sites in Arkansas and Oregon.

However, it says a preliminary assessment concluded that safety at the incineration operations won’t be reduced even if such fires continue.

Continuing to destroy the M-55 rockets containing the nerve agent GB is the safest way to deal with them, according to a news release Thursday from the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.

The fires have occurred in nearly identical incinerators at the Pine Bluff Arsenal and at a chemical-weapons storage depot in Umatilla, Ore. At Umatilla, fires occurred April 7, April 23 and May 18; the Pine Bluff Arsenal incinerator had fires on May 11 and May 22. Other incinerators have had fires but not at such a great frequency.

"Even with the increase in the frequency of rocket fires, the public is at reduced risk with continued M-55 GB-filled rocket disposal destruction process rather than delayed disposal and extended storage," the release said.

The task force includes experts from the Army’s CMA; Washington Group International, a company running the incineration process at both sites; the Army Corps of Engineers; Southwest Research Institute; Sandia National Laboratory; EG&G; and the Army’s Armament Engineering and Technology Center.

The release said the fires were all contained safely inside explosive containment rooms, and "there was never any danger to personnel or any release of agent to the environment." And the release said that should continue to be the case even if there are more fires, based on a preliminary assessment by the Army Engineers of the explosive containment rooms’ functions and integrity, the Army said.

"The ECR [explosive containment rooms] structural integrity, including explosion containment capability, is not compromised" by repeated small fires such as those that have occurred, the release said.

This story was published Friday, June 3, 2005.