[CTRL] Strange Explosions In Arkansas

[William Shannon]

http://www.arktimes.com/010608coverstorya.html Ka-boom: After the big bang, a wall of silence at East Camden defense park By Michael Haddigan June 8, 2001  EAST CAMDEN - The massive explosion that obliterated a Highland Industrial Park munitions bunker April 28 could be heard 30 miles away in Fordyce. Louder still was the silence that followed as officials at the privately owned park dodged questions about the big boom in the cluster of defense plants in the Southwest Arkansas countryside about 100 miles southwest of Little Rock. It wasn't the first time. Explosions and fires at the state's largest industrial park have claimed more than a dozen lives and injured scores of workers since private munitions-makers began operating at the former Naval ammunition depot in the 1960s. "Nobody down here knows what all is in there," said Katie Hutcheson, 70, of Woodberry, just down state Highway 274 from the rural bunker complex. "If I knew what was in there, I'd worry all that much more." Officials treat defense industry activities at the park as if they were state secrets, which some might well be. At the industrial park's main office, a towering signboard reads like a directory of key defense contractors for missiles and electronic warfare - General Dynamics, Lockheed, TRW, Raytheon and others. Armsmakers at the park produced the Multiple Launch Rocket System or MLRS, the missile-killing Patriot missile, the Viper anti-tank weapon, the seaborne Phalanx anti-missile Gatling gun, the Sparrow missile, underwater demolition charges for the Navy and military flares to help American pilots evade enemy fire. The dramatic April blast was a minor incident compared with previous accidental mayhem at the park. But it rattled nerves in two counties, launched a federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms bureau investigation and drew the attention of U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln and U.S. Rep. Mike Ross - and his probable political rival Jay Dickey. The explosion prompted an ATF inspection of all bunkers storing commercial explosives. It also sparked a review of local emergency plans and caused Ouachita County officials to consider installing a disaster siren in case of accidents - or worse - at the park or on the railway lines that supply defense contractors with chemicals and raw material. "I do believe the state needs to look at these areas, given the terrorism that we have seen in Oklahoma City and elsewhere," said County Judge Mike Hesterly. What caused the explosion? Could it happen again? What else is stored in those bunkers? What all goes on at Highland Industrial Park? More than a month after the latest explosion, Calhoun and Ouachita County residents know little more than they did the night it happened. And officials seem intent on keeping it that way. Roy Ledbetter, the industrial park's manager, ducked questions after the explosion and made himself unavailable until a brief, awkward June 4 appearance at an ATF press conference. The ATF itself had almost nothing to say about the explosion until announcing at the East Camden press conference that it was launching an inspection of the rest of the bunkers holding commercial explosives (though not those subject to secrecy as a defense industry). Even the usually talkative local business leaders hold their tongues when it comes to Highland. A recent call to the Camden Area Chamber of Commerce to ask about the park's annual economic impact - ordinarily a figure boosters quote with great pride - brought this response: "Let me give you the number for Highland Industrial Park." Ouachita and Calhoun County residents talk freely about the industrial park, and local officials say they're confident it poses no threat to communities. But many are clearly protective of the park and the defense jobs it provides. "With the closing of the International Paper plant here in Camden," Hesterly said. "The park is absolutely vital to our economy." The Park In 1841, Camden's position as an important Ouachita River steamboat landing for New Orleans-bound cotton and the construction of a cotton gin nudged the sparsely populated region into the industrial age. The area's wealth of timber and oil discoveries in the 1920's brought more work and more money. World War II helped spur further development with construction in 1944 of the Shumaker Naval Ammunition Depot east of Camden on 65,000 acres. The depot manufactured and tested rockets and munitions under tight security. Plenty of South Arkansas residents found solid jobs there, and often worked under tight security at the ammunition plants. Camden fire chief Phil Seaton, whose father worked at the naval depot, remembers guards confiscated cigarette lighters and matches at gates to prevent accidents and sabotage. Secrecy remains a priority at Highland, Seaton said. "Quite frankly, the public doesn't know everything that's out there for security reasons," he said. With World War II and the Korean War ended, the Navy in 1957 announced it would close the facility. But the Navy helped maintain the depot until private industry took notice, according to published accounts. International Paper in 1961 bought 40,000 acres of forest at the former naval depot. And the Brown family of Texas, later famous for its partnership in the global Brown and Root construction company, bought the remaining 25,000 acres. The purchase included the headquarters buildings, the depot's extensive network of railways, hundreds of warehouses, production facilities and bunkers where the Navy stored explosives and ammunition. Highland Resources Inc., a subsidiary of Brown Engineering, then began operating the depot as an industrial park and defense contractors began taking over the old facilities. The Navy's housing area became the town of East Camden. The depot commander's house became a guest house for visiting consultants, executives and engineers. In 1968, Highland donated land to the state for a branch of South Arkansas University, a two-year institution that provides technical training for the park's workforce. The park is also home to the Arkansas Law Enforcement Training Academy and the state Fire Training Academy. The dangerous work of weapons-building took a toll for the jobs it provided: o In 1968, John Marshall Camp of Harmony Grove died when explosive powder he was sifting blew up at a Tracor Aerospace facility. o In 1970, Ivory Murphy of Chidester died of injuries he suffered three weeks earlier in a Tracor fire. o In 1972, Raymond Fogle of Camden died of burns and another man was critically injured in an explosion at Tracor as they were mixing powder used in military flares. o In 1976, an explosion ripped apart a building of the Celesco Corp, killing seven and injuring 16. o In 1983, another explosion at Tracor killed two and injured 19 other workers. The company paid $9,500 in fines for nine safety violations as a result. The Reagan-era defense buildup swelled production and employment at the park. By 1984, the LTV Aerospace and Defense Company produced one MLRS rocket every three minutes and several launch vehicles every week in its East Camden plant. General Dynamics produced Sparrow missiles, and Hitech Inc., made demolition charges for the Army and underwater demolition kits for the Navy. Hitech also made bulk explosives for the Air Force and ignition pellets for missiles produced by another company. And accidents continued. o In 1985, an explosion at the Tracor MBA plant killed two and injured seven others. The company barred an inspector from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration from entering the plant after the explosion of materials used in making flares. It also refused to let law enforcement officials into the plant, angering then-Calhoun County Sheriff Vernon (Red) Dunn. o In 1986, an explosion rocked the LTV-Vought Corporation plant minutes after an employee sounded the alarm and about 75 workers fled the building. o In 1987, another explosion at Tracor destroyed a small building. No one was injured. The end of the Cold War brought defense spending cutbacks. Tracor and General Dynamics layed off workers, causing a rise in local unemployment rates. Tracor, which had 440 employees at the end of 1989, had only 90 by April 1990. General Dynamics, which once employed 1,500 workers, was by now down to 550. Still, three-fourths of the park's 32 tenants were defense plants, Roy Ledbetter said in published reports at the time. In 1994, Gov. Jim Guy Tucker came up with another possible use for the park. He told the Correction Department to look into placing a women's prison at the park. Nothing came out of the idea. But three years later, authorities in the 13th Judicial District, which includes Calhoun, Columbia, Dallas, Ouachita and Union counties, followed up on it. Police rounded up suspects with outstanding warrants and jailed them temporarily at a building in the industrial park. The judicial district paid Highland Resources $1 to use the building for 15 days and used $10,000 in confiscated drug money to build a temporary barracks to hold the suspects. And the park saw still more accidents. o In 1998, an October fire - and possibly an explosion - again hit Tracor, injuring at least one worker. The company turned away responding firefighters and deputies, according to press reports. o At least three other incidents occurred that same year - a June 4 fire that critically injured one man, an August 3 fire and an August 26 explosion. Big boom In 1995, New River Energetics rented six of the earth-covered bunkers to store 600,000 pounds of smokeless gunpowder and propellants, Alliant Tech System's Don Pollock said in a recent phone interview from Radford, Va. Alliant, the parent company of New River Energetics, is an aerospace and defense contractor based in Hopkins, Minn., and a major supplier to the military of small-caliber ammunition. Sales of the material, he said, gradually reduced the quantity stored in the bunkers until New River needed only three storage magazines. One of them, Building 14AT9, housed more than 3,300 drums of smokeless gunpowder and chemicals. On Saturday, April 28, Katie Hutcheson was watching television about 7:30 p.m. when 14AT9 and all it contained went sky-high. The blast's shockwave swatted her white clapboard house. Some area residents say it broke windows and cracked sheetrock. Ceiling tiles fell in offices inside the park. In Camden, the explosion jangled wind chimes inside the home of assistant fire chief Tommy Nutt. In Hampton, it hit so hard that Mary L. Smith, the Calhoun County emergency services coordinator, initially thought the explosion was a New Madrid Fault earthquake. Mrs. Hutcheson and her sons, Mitchell, 47, and Michael, 44, rushed outside. "It about scared my little dogs to death," she said. "We saw a bunch of smoke come boiling up. It smelled like firecrackers." Camden fire chief Seaton said some panicked residents telephoned authorities, believing a nuclear bomb had gone off. Alliant Tech Systems Inc., the company which leased the ground-zero bunker, described the blast less colorfully. "On April 28, 2001, Building 14AT09 had an incident," the company said in documents filed with DEQ. More than 112,000 pounds of smokeless gunpowder and chemicals exploded in the bunker, spreading sticks of undetonated propellant over 27 acres, Alliant said. Debris landed more than a mile away from the bunker. And the force of the explosion damaged heavy metal doors on other bunkers nearby, DEQ reports said. The World War II-era magazine channeled the main force upward preventing other explosions - what experts call "sympathetic detonation" - in neighboring bunkers. "Whoever designed those bunkers is a genius," Smith said. In the hours after the explosion, firefighters, police and local emergency services officials waited, some impatiently, until receiving the "all-clear" from Ledbetter about 11 p.m, she said. "We waited for hours until we got a statement saying everything was safe," said Mary L. Smith, the Calhoun County emergency services coordinator. "It was a communications breakdown that went on too long," The park is private property, Smith said, and Ledbetter wasn't legally obliged to report to local officials about conditions inside. "He didn't have to tell us, but it probably would have been better if he had," she said. The smokeless gunpowder that smithereened the bunker was to be used in making tiny charges to deploy automobile air bags, said Alliant's Don Pollock. Air bags may not be crucial to national security, but details of the most recent blast were shrouded under the same veil of secrecy as missile development at the park. Asked to describe the bunker's contents, Pollock said, "It was smokeless powder." And what is smokeless powder? "It's smokeless powder," Pollock answered, declining further explanation. According to a National Research Council safety conference paper, smokeless gunpowder, also known as guncotton, is mostly used in small arms ammunition. But smokeless and black gunpowders are also a common ingredient in small pipebombs used in terrorist and criminal bombings. Made primarily of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin, smokeless powder was originally developed in the 1880's as a more powerful alternative to gunpowder. It had the added benefit of producing little smoke when fired, giving commanders a clearer view of the battlefield. Alliant produces a wide variety of smokeless powder used by sport shooters who reload their own rounds, according to the company's website. The National Fire Protection Association recommends storage in small quantities in cool, dry places away. The powder must be stored and transported in specially designed containers approved by the federal Transportation Department. The destruction of the bunker and its contents leaves authorities with few clues about conditions inside the bunker before the blast, Pollock said. "The problem is that when you have an explosion like that, there isn't much left," he said. "We may never know the cause." Alliant has rented more bunker space since the explosion, and the company is spreading out its surviving stocks at Highland as a safety measure, Pollock said. The company is thinking about moving out of the park entirely, he said. Congressman Ross won't be sorry to see them go. Ross says he's got nothing against the defense contractors, but doesn't like the idea of companies storing dangerous explosives at the park. "The issues is not the defense contractors, but the materials from out of state that are being stored (at the bunker farm)," he said. "The materials stored in the bunker don't translate into any jobs for Arkansas." Ross, who visited the explosion site days after the blast, said he's pushing to find out more about the incident. "At the very least, law enforcement and the emergency services in that area ought to know what materials are being stored there," he said. "And there needs to be an evacuation plan for the employees and the residents in the area." Fallout The dearth of information after the blast left some wondering who is in charge of inspecting the bunker farm and dealing with disasters in the private park. Locals and some officials say really only the press was confused. In any case, those who expected local and state inspectors to pour onto the site to investigate the blast had it wrong, they say. Records on hazardous chemicals are filed with emergency services agencies, officials say, just as any industry would. But the ATF is the only agency responsible for inspections of commercial explosive and their storage, they say. Camden fire chief Seaton, who went to the park with fire engines after the blast, said he has a duty to respond if there's a chance lives are in danger. "I just went far enough to make sure there wasn't a life in danger, and then I backed off," he said. "It doesn't hurt my feelings when they tell me I can't go in there." The state Office of Emergency Services at Conway doesn't have oversight either. "We are not a regulatory agency," said Jack Dubose, deputy director of the state's Emergency Services office at Conway. "Under your sink, you probably have a number of hazardous chemicals. I can't come to your house and start looking around under your sink." And DEQ, the state environmental agency, isn't mandated to regulate handling of hazardous materials, only hazardous waste, DEQ spokesman Doug Szehner. Alliant filed a cleanup plan with the agency, and DEQ is awaiting results of soil and water samples collected by the company for analysis, Szehner said. Since the propellant scattered by the explosion can be reused, it is classified as "product", not waste, he said. Alliant has gathered the propellant and placed it in drums for shipment off the site. Some Camden-area leaders have toured at least two companies in the park and report defense contractor safety programs are extensive and strict. "I've been on the tour with Lockheed Martin," said Ouachita County Judge Hesterly. "They have an excellent, excellent safety record and procedures. They have teeth in it too. They mean what they say. If you violate the rules, you're fired." Robert Gunnels, who heads the history department at Highland's SAU-Tech campus, toured the Atlantic Research Corp. facilities. "We spent probably 15 minutes in the briefing room being told what we could do and couldn't do, where we could go and couldn't go," he said. "They have the best security measures they can have." Still, no one is complaining about the prospect of disaster sirens that would tell them when to run.