Assistant Metro Editor
No agent was released and no workers were injured, officials said.
“We did cease operations as a safety precaution,” said Donovan Mager, a spokesman for Westinghouse-Anniston, the government contractor for the facility.
The Army is destroying tons of Cold War-era chemical weapons stored in igloos at the Anniston Army Depot. Since Aug. 9, the Army has been destroying M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB, or sarin, nerve agent.
This latest issue is one in a line of outages that have limited Army officials as they work to dispose of the chemical weapons stockpile. However, the incinerator here is destroying weapons faster than its forebears in Johnston Island and Tooele, Utah.
Army officials didn’t expect to have the incinerator down for long and hoped to resume processing rockets by today.
The fire, which smoke alarms detected at 4:21 p.m. Thursday, was extinguished by the time firefighters from the Anniston Army Depot arrived nine minutes later, Mager said. A worker in the next room heard the alarm and put it out.
Officials gave the “all clear” signal at 5 p.m.
The fire was contained by the incinerator employee with nothing more than a hand-held extinguisher and by cutting off power to the air conditioner.
Incinerator officials said the fire happened in the facility’s heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) unit due to a faulty bearing in the unit’s 450-horsepower motor.
The fire was contained in a room under engineering controls, but away from rocket processing and the liquid incinerator, said Tim Garrett, the incinerator program manager.
“There are two compressors that support cooling air in the building,” Garrett said. “And we don’t need both of those to begin processing.”
Garrett downplayed the significance of the event and said workers followed proper procedures.
“There is lot of equipment out here with a lot of moving parts, they will have problems and we address those as they occur,” Garrett said. “What was very good to me was the way the personnel followed procedure.”
As of Wednesday, 7,063 rockets and 7,688 gallons of GB had been destroyed during operations at the incinerator.