ARSENAL FIRE SITE MAY NOT BE REBUILT

By Wilson Brown/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Wednesday,  June 29, 2005 

No plans are in place to rebuild another storage unit on the site of the June 6 fire that destroyed an aging warehouse and more than 7,500 canisters of white phosphorus housed in it at the Pine Bluff Arsenal.

"At the moment we do not have any immediate plans to rebuild on the same site," said Cheryl Avery, an Arsenal spokeswoman. "We have another storage facility that we store WP in.

"Therefore we will continue to store it on site for our customers."

The Arsenal is the Army's sole supplier of white phosphorus ammunition in the Western Hemisphere.

Those canisters salvaged from the June 6 fire and the flare up on June 9 will be stored in the other white phosphorus warehouse on post, according to Avery.

White phosphorus, a highly flammable and potentially harmful chemical, catches fire once exposed to air or to heat 90 degrees Fahrenheit and above, Arsenal officials have said.

The warehouse that burned to the ground on June 6 didn't have air conditioning or a fire sprinkler system, Col. Tom Woloszyn, the Arsenal's commander, said.

Meanwhile, the warehouse that will soon house the salvaged canisters isn't climate controlled either, Avery said.

Avery didn't have an answer for why Arsenal officials didn't move the white phosphorus to a climate controlled facility before the summer.

Last week, investigators blamed the 17-hour blaze on a leaking canister of white phosphorus housed in the warehouse that could have set off a chain reaction.

Avery said the leaking canister likely had a small hole.

So far, the fire's damages are estimated at $900,000. This includes $300,000 for a new warehouse of the same size and $600,000 for the white phosphorus lost, Avery said.

But the figure could grow once cleanup costs are determined.

Those costs will be determined after contractors finish their assessments of how much damage the chemical might have done to the environment, Avery said.

Arsenal officials have already put the cleanup out for bid, she said, and contractors were visiting the site Wednesday to set the costs of their work.

The entire clean-up process is expected to take 60 to 90 days, Avery said.

How the Arsenal will pay for it is another matter.

"After we have a cost, we will submit it to Army Material Command (at) Fort Belvoir, Va.," Avery said.

Arsenal officials cannot give a possible cost for the clean-up work since its "never had a warehouse of this magnitude to catch fire and burn down."

Meanwhile, Woloszyn has said the fires will have no impact on the phosphorus production on post.

According to the soon-to-be-departing commander, plans are already in place to update the aging warehouses on post, but not the funding.

The Arsenal is scheduled to receive a new phosphorus plant in two years, with funding from the fiscal year 2004 defense budget, he said.

No injuries were reported in either of the fires.

Air tested at the intersection of Stokes Road and 321A was over twice the permissible exposure limit on the afternoon of June 9, causing Arsenal workers to evacuate, according to an air sampling report by the Arsenal's Industrial Hygiene Section.