Blasts Destroy Rocket Fuel Plant; 1 Killed

Three searing explosions of orange flame Wednesday destroyed a plant that makes rocket fuel oxidizer for the space shuttle and many of the nation’s nuclear missiles. The blasts flattened a candy factory next door. One person was killed and 210 were hurt, one critically.

At 10 p.m., officials said all employees at both the Pacific Engineering and Production Co. and the Kidd and Co. marshmallow factory had been accounted for.

Nevada Gov. Richard Bryan expressed gratitude that the death toll had not gone higher.

“It would appear that we’ve been extraordinarily fortunate,” Bryan said. “This thing could have been much worse.”

Body Discovered

Roy Parrish, the Clark County fire chief, said the fatality was a man whose body was found outside one of the buildings at Pacific Engineering. The man’s identity was withheld pending notification of his family.

Given the severity of the blasts “there should have been more deaths,” Parrish said. “We are so happy there weren’t.”

The critically injured victim reportedly was taken to Valley Hospital in Las Vegas, 15 miles north of Henderson. Details about the victim were not available.

Like Nuclear Blasts

The three explosions were likened to the nuclear bombs that the federal government tests underground in Nevada. Two of the blasts were strong enough to register on earthquake seismographs more than 200 miles away at Caltech in Pasadena, spokesman Robert Finn said.

Finn said that the first, at 11:53 a.m., measured at about 3.0; and that the second, at 11:57 a.m., had a magnitude of 3.5. This, he said, was equal to an atomic bomb exploding with the force of nearly one kiloton of TNT. “I was surprised,” Finn declared. “That was a big explosion.”

The force jolted an airliner in the sky; flipped some cars and knocked others off a state highway; threw pedestrians to the ground in Henderson; shook hotel-casinos in Las Vegas, and blew a massive black cloud of acrid smoke high into the gray desert sky over much of southern Nevada.

Henderson was wrecked by the explosions. Windows were shattered, doors were blown off hinges, roofs were wrenched off and railroad cars were knocked from their tracks. At a Henderson fire station, more than a mile from the blasts, inside walls moved a foot. Gov. Bryan asked for federal disaster assistance.

Schools were dismissed. City officials invoked an 8 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew after reports of scattered looting. The Nevada National Guard was placed on alert.

Pacific Engineering makes oxidizer for the fuel in the rockets that send the NASA shuttle into space and for the MX, Trident D-5, Pershing II and Titan nuclear missiles. In Washington, officials said they did not think the tragedy would delay the shuttle program. The Pentagon said it had enough oxidizer on hand for MX missiles.

Pentagon officials said Pershings and Titans were no longer being produced. But one spokesman, Lt. Col. Jim Jannette, declined to speculate about whether the accident would slow production of the Navy D-5.

Begins With Fire

The tragedy began with a fire at Pacific Engineering, which employs 300 people, about 125 of whom were on the site.

Victims said the fire broke out in “the basic machine” that develops the fuel oxidizer, according to Jack London, community relations director for Desert Springs Hospital.

“They were unable to control the fire in the machine,” London said.

Vic Neumiller, the plant superintendent, confirmed that the explosions started with a fire. Asked whether the blaze started with a machinery failure, he replied: “That’s probably right.”

“We were attempting to put the fire out when the explosion happened,” Neumiller said. He said that he and a number of employees tried to smother the blaze with water.

One worker, who declined to be identified, said the blaze began as a “first-stage fire” in the “batch drying room,” which he said was a small building apart from the plant itself. “When it went into a second-stage fire, everybody ran.

“We had to go. It was getting too hot. Everybody scattered in different directions.” The employee said he and another man made it 3,000 yards west into the desert before the first explosion threw them into the air.

When the employee stopped running, he said he was several miles into the desert.

Fleeing saved scores of lives.

Spencer Williams, 18, a student, was driving past the plant. “I saw black smoke,” he said, “and I stopped and looked . . . I watched people pouring out, running away. I jumped back in my car, and I was going to call the fire department.”

Describes Explosion

Then came the first blast. “You can’t imagine the concussion,” said Neumiller, who was still inside the plant. The explosion knocked him off a tank and carried him 14 feet.

On its heels came the second and third explosions. When they were over, Neumiller had lost a hard hat that he had pulled firmly onto his head. His pants were blown off at the knees. One knee was gashed, the other bruised. One hand was cut. “This happened at either the second or third explosion,” he said. “It was devastating.”

The first blast knocked Williams and his car into an adjoining lane of the roadway next to the plant. “The car was all dented,” he said, “and the windshield was all shattered. My back window was blown completely out.”

That first blast “was like being at ground zero,” said Steve Chase, 41, a foreman at Pacific Engineering. Between explosions, employees continued to run upwind, away from the spreading fire, he said. “They literally ran out into the desert trying to get away. Every time there was an explosion, it would knock them down.

“Then they would run some more.

“You see something coming at you, and you don’t have time to hit the ground. I said to myself, ‘Is this what it is like to die?’ ”

“People were scattered all over the desert,” Neumiller said. At first, a few office personnel cowered near downwind buildings, tried to find shelter--but eventually made a run for it.

“The plant is leveled,” Neumiller said. “There is nothing there. All the employees’ vehicles went. They’re gone.”

A hundred yards away, at the Kidd marshmallow plant, workers spotted the initial fire at Pacific Engineering--before any of the fuel oxidizer exploded.

“They heard a couple of minor explosions,” Charles Kidd, president of the family-owned candy firm, said in a telephone interview from his home in Ligonier, Ind. “My brother, John, and his assistant used a paging system to sound ‘Vacate!’

“Everyone was just outside and getting away when Pacific Engineering blew up, and they were all knocked down and around and into things. There was quite a scramble to get the hell out of there.”

Thirty workers were in the marshmallow plant, which employs 90 people in three shifts. All 30 were hurt, but only three were hospitalized, Kidd said.

John Kidd and his assistant searched for stragglers and were the last to leave.

“From what John was able to see--he used the term ‘demolished,’ ” Charles Kidd reported, trying to describe the final outcome.

Door Blown In

Scott Wrenshall, 19, a construction worker installing insulation at Kidd, recalled the order to vacate. “A guy yelled, ‘Get out!’ ” Wrenshall said. “Then the door blew in on the factory. We ran out and we saw the fire.”

Wrenshall climbed into a pickup and tried to drive away. “The next explosion blew all of the windows out of the truck. I looked back, and there was nothing left.

“The building wasn’t even there.”

Wrenshall’s partner, Vernon Wiltse, 31, said the first blast was “like a sonic boom.” Then, he said, “Everything just blew apart.” Wiltse said he saw all of the walls in his building move outward.

“I didn’t stick around,” he said.

Watching from the oxidizer plant, Neumiller said, he saw corrugated sheet metal from the candy plant fly through the air.

“It just went zap, zap,” he said.

Clyde Simon, a packer at Pacific Engineering, was one of the first to reach a hospital. Simon had run away from the fuel oxidizer plant and hitched a ride to Desert Springs Hospital. He was treated for arm burns and released.

Others were cut by flying glass. Several had broken arms and legs. Many were bruised. Still others got rides from the candy company to area hospitals.

London, the spokesman for Desert Springs, said 75 patients in all were taken to his facility, where they were treated and transferred to an emergency evacuation center at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

In the midst of his work at the hospital, London learned that the explosions had knocked down his bedroom at his home, two miles from the Pacific Engineering plant, and that tile had been blown off his roof.

His neighbors had front and back doors blown off their hinges.

Jetliner Rocked

In the sky over southern Nevada, an America West jetliner approaching McCarran International Airport at Las Vegas was rocked by the explosions. The plane was Flight 46 from Burbank.

“We felt a little jolt,” passenger John Conrad, 62, of Westlake Village, Calif., told the Associated Press. “The second explosion looked like a mini-atomic bomb. . . . There was a tall column of smoke going up 20,000 feet. . . .

“Then there was another slight jolt.”

Nobody on the plane was injured. It landed safely.

At Hoover Dam, windows rattled at the power plant in the belly of the structure, said Bob Baker, a dam worker.

He said the dam itself did not shake.

In Henderson, hundreds of windows were blown out of homes and businesses.

The explosions severed a natural gas pipeline near Pacific Engineering. Flames and fumes prevented firemen from entering the area for more than five hours to shut it off.

“The blasts flipped cars over, knocked pedestrians to the ground, and shattered windows in the whole town,” said Susan Russo, 37, a Henderson resident who was in her pickup truck at the time.

Henderson Fire Chief Dale Starr had left his office at the fire station when he saw a huge column of black smoke.

“I knew what it was,” he said. “I could see these big columns of smoke, and then all of a sudden I could see the biggest fire I ever saw. The width of it had to be 1,000-2,000 feet and then at least 200 feet into the air, perhaps more.” He stopped his car to talk to people gathered a mile from the plant when the first explosion hit.

Windows Shattered

It shattered his windshield and broke his car windows. He turned the car and headed back downtown. “Just before I crossed the railroad tracks . . . the second blast hit. It went off, and it literally just picked my car up and slammed me down and broke every piece of glass in it. . . .

“I didn’t really even hear the blast. All I could hear was the glass breaking and then it slammed me down to the ground.”

Starr suffered cuts and was treated at St. Rose de Lima Hospital. He returned to duty.

All of the windows and doors were knocked out of the Glenn Halla Nursing Home, 1 1/2 miles from Pacific Engineering.

Forty-four of its elderly residents were taken in vans to a local high school, two hospitals and then to an evacuation area at the Las Vegas Convention Center. “Some of them are disoriented and they need a lot of help to guide them,” said Jeane Heki, director of nursing services.

“But there was no excitement, no tears.”

At the Vocational Technical School in Henderson, where 12,000 students are registered, classes were evacuated after the first blast. Out of fear, many students ran back inside the classrooms after the second explosion.

“The kids were bolting down the hallways,” said Dan Greechley, a maintenance worker. “At first, we thought it was an airplane crash. And then it seemed like an earthquake. First we evacuated the building, but then the second explosion came.

“The concussion was so strong we told everybody to get back inside,” he said.

When other schools in Henderson were dismissed for the day, buses were dispatched to pick up children; but they were turned back in confusion by police.

Ambulances Blocked

Roads out of Henderson were jammed. Ambulances attempting to get in to help the injured were blocked.

A column of smoke plumed 10 miles into the sky. It changed colors as different chemicals caught fire and exploded.

One chemical was ammonia and produced a white blast. Its smoke caused eyes to tear and throats to turn sore. Another chemical was hydrogen chloride, which gave off smoke with a hue that was tinged with brown. Together, they make ammonium perchlorate, the oxidizer for the rocket fuel.

That oxidizer is shipped to Morton Thiokol Co. in Salt Lake City, where it is mixed with powdered aluminum and packed into the shuttle and missile rockets.

Jim Thompson, president of Local 4856 of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents employees at Pacific Engineering, said the union has been concerned about a lack of federal or state standards on production of the fuel oxidizer.

“The union has always screamed that we needed standards,” he said. “We talked to management. We talked to state people. We asked for safety standards that would protect our people and protect our community.

“The response I’ve gotten until two months ago is there’s no problem.

“On many occasions, people have gotten severe burns,” he said. “There were some who couldn’t return to work. My 25-year-old son was in an explosion in 1982. His heart was dislodged, and he had massive compound fractures.”

Safety Problems Told

Mike Wright, national health and safety director of the union, said a two-person safety team was sent to Henderson five years ago. They concluded that “the company was acting in an unsafe manner,” Wright said.

He said they found problems routinely present in the plant “which could cause a major explosion.”

“The local has been doing their damnedest to get the place cleaned up,” he said. “We simply did not make enough progress to prevent the accident.”

The plant was owned by state Sen. James Gibson and his brother, Fred. They could not be reached for comment.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Mathis Chazanov, T.W. McGarry, and Louis Sahagun in Henderson, Nev.; Ronald L. Soble in Las Vegas; Melissa Healy in Washington; and Cathleen Decker, Richard E. Meyer, Ronald B. Taylor and Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles.