11/14/03

A small fire inside the rocket furnace at the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator forced the Army to shut down the burner Thursday, officials said.

While a blade was cutting a rocket into pieces Thursday afternoon, flammable propellant flared and ignited a rocket piece, according to the Army.

The M-55 rockets being destroyed are drained of liquid sarin before processing, but the flammable propellant remains during the process.

The explosive material from the rocket had not yet entered the chute and there was no explosion, said Donavan Mager, a spokesman for Westinghouse Anniston, the company that operates the incinerator.

The fire took place in a room built with 24-inch concrete and steel walls and designed to withstand an explosion. Fire dampers immediately closed the room off so that the fire burned itself out within moments, according to an Army statement.

The Army is conducting trial burns to determine whether it is meeting federal and state environmental standards at the incinerator. However, the rocket furnace was not conducting a trial burn when it was forced to shut down Thursday. It was processing rockets to drain them of enough liquid sarin for a test at the liquid incinerator.

The liquid incinerator is expected to test as scheduled today, Mager said. He said the rocket furnace had minor damage and was expected to be back in service today.

Also this week, the contractor hired to operate the laboratory at the incinerator fired a lab technician blamed for accidentally setting off an alarm at the facility and then refusing to admit his mistake for three days.

The 23-year-old, who has not been identified, tested the wrong air monitor with a diluted sarin nerve gas, officials said. He was not dismissed for the mistake, but for trying to cover it up, Army officials said.

The alarm forced the laboratory building to be evacuated early Friday morning.

The incinerator was built to destroy more than 660,000 Cold War-era chemical weapons.