Another fire halted the destruction of rockets armed with nerve agent at Umatilla Chemical Depot near Hermiston last week.

At 9:16 p.m. Friday, a rocket that had been drained of sarin caught fire as a machine was chopping it into pieces. No one was hurt and the fire caused minimal damage, said Mary Binder, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Army depot. Workers checked and fixed the equipment and restarted the line by 3 a.m. Sunday.

This spring, three similar fires led state regulators to suspend weapons incineration for several weeks while engineers made sure the fires did not increase risk for workers or area residents. The Army is still investigating the cause of the fires.