Friction from a blade chopping rockets caused the Thursday fire, said Doug Hammrick, site manager for the Washington Demilitarization Company, the subcontractor operating a facility that is in the process of destroying the chemical arsenal at the U.S. Army depot.
He explained that a nozzle spraying water on the blade to keep it cool was hit and dislocated by a stray piece of the rocket. Workers replaced the blade and fixed the nozzle, placing it higher than it was to avoid a repeat of the incident, Hammrick said.
Rockets are destroyed by first being drained of the liquid sarin nerve agent, then chopped into pieces before being dropped into a high-temperature furnace.
This was the first fire to occur at the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, but similar fires have occurred at other weapons disposal sites, Hammrick said.
``The good news is that the system is designed for that,'' he said.
The depot stores about 7.4 million pounds of deadly nerve and blister agents in a variety of munitions, about 12 percent of the national stockpile.
Incineration of the agent began about a month ago and is calculated to take about six years.
