LATEST NEWS
Monday, August 01, 2005
Incineration
resumes after another Depot fire
By HAL McCUNE of the East Oregonian
hmccune@eastoregonian.com
HERMISTON — Rocket incineration operations resumed over the weekend following
a fire Friday night in one of two explosive containment rooms at the Umatilla
Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.
The circumstances were similar to three prior rocket fires on April
7 and 23 and May 18, according to Mary Binder, the Army’s public affairs
officer at the Umatilla Chemical Depot.
Friday’s fire occurred at 9:16 p.m. as a GB M55 rocket was being
cut into pieces prior to incineration. The chemical agent — sarin — had already
been drained from the rocket. The rocket ignited as the shear blade was making
the fifth of seven cuts, this one through the rocket motor section.
The fire was quickly extinguished by the “water deluge system” in
the remotely-operated containment room, and damage was reported as minimal.
The facility had destroyed 188 rockets Friday before the fire. Nearly
25,000 rockets have been destroyed since incineration operations began last
September.
The circumstances of Friday’s fire support the recently announced
preliminary results of an Army task force’s ongoing investigation into the
rocket fires at Umatilla. That report pointed to aging rocket fuel as one
possible cause.
Several rocket motors were sent to New Jersey for testing following
the three fires last spring. Tests showed the separation of two compounds
in the more the 40-years-old fuel — one of them nitroglycerin — formed droplets
that could spark a fire when the rocket is sheared.
The aging fuel does not make the rockets more sensitive to impact,
so there’s no increased safety risk during storage or handling, the tests
concluded. But it’s possible the nitroglycerin could be touched off when
pinched during the shearing process.
All three earlier fires ignited as the rockets were being sliced,
and all three were from the same lot, October 1962, so the fuel was from
the same batch. Friday’s fire involved a rocket from a different lot, August
of 1963, and had a different kind of plastic covering.
But the circumstances leading to the fire were similar, said Dennis
Murphey, administrator of the state Department of Environmental Quality’s
chemical demilitarization program.
Murphey said that about 10,000 rockets were processed between the
spring rocket fires and Friday’s incident. “We’re happy to see the frequency
dropped off” and that the deluge system worked as planned to prevent damage,
he said this morning.
After coordinating with DEQ, the Army resumed processing rockets
on the A line at about 5 p.m. Saturday, Murphey said. The fire occurred on
the B line, which resumed operation early Sunday morning.
About 160 rockets were processed Sunday and about 60 by 8 this morning
without incident, he added.
The final report on the rocket motor fuel tests is expected by the
end of the month.