By Brian Lyman
Star Staff Writer
05-22-2005

Weapons destruction halted Sunday at the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Pine Bluff, Ark., after a small fire broke out along the lines. The fire, the second at Pine Bluff this month and the fifth in the Army’s chemical weapons disposal program since the beginning of April, began after debris from a cut rocket caught fire along a shearing line. The fire lasted about 20 seconds. The equipment was undamaged, and no one was hurt. Processing resumed Monday afternoon. Pine Bluff briefly stopped operations last week after a fire broke out during processing at the Umatilla Chemical Disposal Facility in Umatilla, Ore. It was Umatilla’s third fire since April 7, and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality stopped weapons disposal pending an investigation. Pine Bluff experienced a two-minute fire in its explosive containment room on May 11 that stopped processing for two days. "What happens here is different than Umatilla," said Robert Love, the acting project general manager for Washington Group International, which runs disposal operations in Pine Bluff and Anniston. "In Umatilla, the fires started with a pressure pulse, a low-order explosion, and burst into flames. The rocket pieces (in Pine Bluff) sit on a gate and start to smolder." Rockets are drained of their chemical agent and then chopped up and moved toward an incinerator. The rocket slices fall onto the gates after being cut up into seven pieces by another machine. The pieces that caught fire Sunday came from the area around the fifth cut, near the rocket motors. Army officials have said that the rocket propellant in the munitions may be contributing to the fires. "The fire may have been in the rocket motors," Love said. "The Army’s going to do some limited testing to see if the rocket degraded over time." Pine Bluff and Umatilla have installed additional water systems on the line. Love said the system at Pine Bluff has been reprogrammed to douse the gates and the chopped rockets for four seconds, up from the current two. The Anniston Chemical Weapons Disposal Facility finished destroying its sarin-filled rockets last year. A rocket at Anniston caught fire while being sheared in November 2003. The fire lasted 15 minutes. Processing resumed the following day, and no other incidents were reported.

About Brian Lyman

Brian Lyman covers infrastructure and the cities of Heflin and Lincoln for the Anniston Star. He lives in Anniston.