| A fire broke out at the Pine Bluff
Chemical Disposal Facility in Pine Bluff, Ark., Saturday morning but was
quickly contained.
An operator spotted flames in the facility’s explosive
containment room at 11:39 a.m., right after a machine made the fifth cut
on a sarin-filled rocket. The fire was quickly extinguished by backup systems.
The fire is the fourth at Pine Bluff since May.
The fire began at the same step in the rocket cutting
process as previous fires at Pine Bluff and at a weapons-processing facility
in Umatilla, Ore. Investigations have suggested that nitroglycerin in the
rockets may be involved. Two previous fires at Pine Bluff occurred after
the fifth cut in a rocket; a fire last month began in a debris-collection
pan in the Explosive Containment Room.
Pine Bluff officials said they expected rocket processing
to resume Saturday evening.
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