Blasts Destroy Rocket Fuel Plant in Nevada

Three searing explosions of orange flame Wednesday destroyed a plant that makes rocket fuel for the space shuttle and flattened a candy factory next door. Initial reports said as many as 200 people were injured, but the number of fatalities, if any, was not immediately known.

Early reports from Clark County officials put the number of dead at nine, but Marc Hechter of the county’s Emergency Operations Bureau said officials were unable to confirm this count later in the day. “We’re just now getting into the fire zone,” Hechter said in an evening telephone interview.

‘Could Have Been Much Worse’

Nevada Gov. Richard Bryan, who was at the scene, said there were two people missing but no confirmed deaths.

“It would appear we’ve been extraordinarily fortunate at this point,” Bryan said. “This thing could have been much worse. If there are no confirmed deaths, this could be a miracle.”

The explosions 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 15 miles north, and blew a massive black cloud of acrid smoke high into the gray desert sky over much of southern Nevada.

Two of the blasts were strong enough to register on earthquake seismographs more than 200 miles away at Caltech in Pasadena, said spokesman Robert Finn. The first, at 11:53 a.m., measured about 3.0; the second, at 11:57 a.m., had a magnitude of 3.5.

“I find that absolutely amazing,” Finn said. “That is extremely powerful.”

The three blasts, which witnesses said began as a fire in machinery, destroyed the Pacific Engineering & Production Co. in Henderson. The plant makes oxidizer for the fuel in the rockets that send the NASA shuttle into space and for the nation’s MX, Trident D-5, Pershing II and Titan nuclear missiles.

Officials said they did not think the tragedy would delay the shuttle program. They said that there was enough oxidizer on hand for MX missiles and that Pershings and Titans were no longer being produced. But Lt. Col. Jim Jannette, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to speculate about whether the accident would slow production of the Navy D-5.

Initial reports put the death toll at nine, according to Doug Bradford, a spokesman for the Las Vegas Emergency Management Crisis Team, and Jim Thompson, president of Local 4856 of the United Steelworkers of America, which represents workers at the plant. “We can only account for 11 alive,” Thompson said, “and there are probably 40 missing--labor people.”

Bradford initially told reporters that between 180 and 200 people were injured. They were taken to four hospitals in the Henderson and Las Vegas areas. Doctors and nurses said at least two of the injured were in critical condition. They said most of the others suffered minor injuries, including a number of burns, cuts and bruises.

Victims reported that the initial blast followed a fire that broke out in “the basic machine” that develops the fuel oxidizer, said Jack London, community relations director for Desert Springs Hospital.

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

The fire engulfed the plant, said Spencer Williams, 18, a motorist who stopped his car near the facility, which employs 300. “I saw black smoke,” Williams reported, “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.

“An explosion knocked me into the other lane.”

That first blast “was like being at ground zero,” said Steve Chase, 41, a foreman at Pacific Engineering. All employees began to run upwind and 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?’ ”

That first blast flattened the Kidd Marshmallow candy company about 100 yards away from the rocket fuel facility. The company employs 85 people.

“A guy yelled, ‘Get out!’ ” said Scott Wrenshall, 19, a construction worker installing insulation at Kidd. “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.”

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

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

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

Henderson Fire Chief Dale Starr heard the first explosion, jumped into his car “and the second explosion rolled his car over,” said Janet Smith, an employee of Mercy Ambulance in Las Vegas.

Ambulance attendants bandaged Starr, she said, and he returned to duty.

The explosions knocked all of the windows and doors out of the Glenn Halla Nursing Home a mile and a half from Pacific Engineering.

London said 75 patients were evacuated and taken to Desert Springs Hospital, where they were treated for cuts and bruises from flying glass and transferred to an emergency evacuation center at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The explosions also severed a natural gas pipeline in the area of the fuel oxidizer plant. Flames and fumes prevented firemen from entering the area for more than five hours to shut off the gas line.

“People were scattered all over the desert,” said Vic Neumiller, the superintendent at Pacific Engineering, whose hard hat was blown away and who suffered a gash on one knee and a bruise on the other. His pants were ripped away where he was injured.

Neumiller said the explosions started with a fire. Asked whether the blaze began with a machinery fire, he replied: “That’s probably right.”

“We were attempting to put the fire out when the explosion happened,” Neumiller said.

He said the blast knocked him off a tank and carried him about 14 feet. Pointing to his knee, he said: “This happened at either the second or third explosion.”

Neumiller and other workers said they almost managed to contain the initial fire with water.

“It was almost contained,” Neumiller said. “You can’t imagine the concussion of those bangs. It was devastating.”

The candy plant next door consisted mostly of corrugated metal buildings.

“It just went. Zap! Zap!” Neumiller said.” He said the sheet metal and beams from inside the buildings flew through the air over a wide area.

Employee vehicles parked outside the fuel oxidizer plant were destroyed, he said. “They’re gone.”

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 following 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.

Other schools in Henderson were dismissed for the day. Buses were dispatched to pick up children but were turned back in confusion by troopers.

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

The city of Henderson invoked an 8 p.m.-to-6 a.m. curfew after reports of scattered looting. The Nevada National Guard was placed on alert.

More than 300 people lined up in downtown Las Vegas to give blood within an hour after the three blasts.

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.

At the Steelworkers Hall about three miles from Pacific Engineering, Thompson 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.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Cathleen Decker, Richard E. Meyer and Henry Weinstein in Los Angeles and Melissa Healy in Washington.