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A small fire broke out at the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal
facility Tuesday. It was the second fire at the facility this month and the
sixth overall for the chemical weapons disposal facility in Pine Bluff, Ark.
The fire started shortly before 11:36 a.m., when a control
room operator responded to a fire alarm in the explosive-containment room.
The incident occurred during a pause in rocket processing, while a rocket
was undergoing shearing; during the pause, the remaining portion of the rocket
ignited.
The fire lasted less than a minute. No one was injured, and
no chemicals were leaked.
Three fires related to rocket processing broke out at the
facility in May and August. Another fire broke out in an ash pan in the facility
in July. The fifth fire of the year broke out Nov. 12, on a tipping gate
in the deactivation furnace.
Rockets were the source of fires during the spring at Pine
Bluff and Umatilla, Ore. The Army’s Chemical Materials Agency, which oversees
chemical weapons disposal, released a report in August that blamed a propellant
in the rockets for the Umatilla fires.
Raini Wright, a spokeswoman for Pine Bluff, said it was not
clear if the rocket fire Tuesday was connected to any of the previous fires.
“We really don’t know,” Wright said. “They haven’t finished
reviewing what happened. It would be too early to say.
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