Firm Looks Elsewhere to Replace Rocket Fuel Plant

Alert to the wariness of this growing suburban community, a Pacific Engineering & Production Co. official described as “highly unlikely” Friday the possibility that the firm will build a rocket fuel plant here to replace the one leveled this week by powerful explosions.

Pacific Engineering counsel Keith Rooker said locations in more remote regions of Nevada, as well as in Texas and Utah, are under consideration for a replacement plant. The firm processes solid propellants for the nation’s space shuttle and nuclear-tipped missile programs.

“I think it is highly unlikely this plant will be built at that location,” Rooker said of Pacific Engineering’s previous plant site, located on an island of county land surrounded by Henderson, a town of 54,000. “I also think it is highly unlikely that we would want to.”

Triggered by a stubborn fire that started in the plant mixing room, or “batch house,” a series of explosions Wednesday destroyed the facility and a neighboring marshmallow factory. Two workers were believed killed and 322 people were treated for mostly minor injuries. There have been about 5,000 property damage claims filed by homeowners with government agencies, and damage is estimated at $100 million.

Sensitivity Increases

The explosions and resulting acrid smoke created havoc for Henderson and neighboring Las Vegas suburbs, including a panicky evacuation of schoolchildren, and have left what Rooker described as a climate of “local sensitivity” about industrial hazards.

There were new revelations Friday to heighten that sensitivity:

- Clark County Fire Chief Roy Parrish said he had been surprised to learn Wednesday that a major natural gas pipeline ran within a dozen feet of the batch house, where potentially explosive chemicals are mixed into a product called amoniom perchlorate. The role played by escaped natural gas in the sequence of fire and explosions was unclear Friday, although at least one worker reported smelling natural gas in the initial stages of the fire.

- Building inspectors said previous investigations of the rocket fuel facility had turned up exposed live wires and explosive levels of hydrogen gas. The inspectors also found walls and machinery corroded by acetic fumes. State safety officials said the company was fined and forced to correct these problems.

- An investigating official said there were indications of poor quality control at the plant, specifically referring to workers’ reports that they had extinguished small fires “all the time at the plant. That’s almost unbelievable.”

Rooker defended Pacific Engineering’s safety practices. He described the plant owners, a politically powerful Nevada family, and its managers as “people who cared . . . about their people and their safety.” The attorney said the plant had an active safety committee, dominated by union workers, and regularly enforced its own safety regulations.

One of Only 2 Plants

The Pacific Engineering plant was one of only two in the nation that processed solid rocket fuel. The other is operated by Kerr-McGee Corp. and occupies the same industrial park here as Pacific Engineering. Kerr-McGee has suspended its rocket fuel processing in the wake of the Wednesday explosion.

“We are committed as a corporate matter to rebuild” somewhere, Rooker said, saying that the firm’s product is vital to the nation’s space program and defense systems. “We don’t have a space program in this country right now. It’s gone. And until this capacity is replaced we will not have one.”

NASA officials have said there is enough solid rocket fuel to supply the agency’s limited launch schedule for this year. The shuttle has not flown since the Jan. 23, 1986, explosion of the Challenger.

Rooker said it would cost $15 million to $20 million to rebuild the plant, which was insured, a figure that does not include the price of new property. Despite his comments about the unlikelihood of rebuilding here, Rooker would not completely rule out the option, saying that the present site was one “of a number of potential locations.”

Growing Reservations

In the aftermath of the explosion, residents and city officials have expressed growing reservations about rebuilding the plant here. County and state officials conducted an unannounced inspection of the Kerr-McGee facility Friday, an apparent indicator of increased sensitivity toward safety.

The cause of the blast has not been determined. Early reports indicated the fire was ignited in the batch house by an equipment malfunction, and after workers fought unsuccessfully to contain it, it spread to drums of amoniom perchlorate.

Fire investigators cannot survey the blackened rubble until residual chemicals are cleaned up, a process expected to take at least a week.

Rooker would not speculate on the fire’s cause, but he has told employees that it is not believed that Pacific Engineering “product or processes” were involved. Company officials appeared interested in pursuing what part the Southwest Gas Co. pipeline played in the sequence.

The line, which funnels natural gas from Las Vegas to Boulder, predated the plant at the site, and was said by officials of both companies to be safely buried two to five feet underground. Union workers, however, have said that in some places the pipe is exposed because of uneven terrain.

Labeled ‘Dangerous’

A county official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described the closeness of the gas line to the fuel-making products as “dangerous.” County codes require that no buildings be erected directly over gas mains, a provision with which Rooker said the company took pains to comply.

Photographs showed a plume of natural gas flaring after the explosions, according to the gas company. Utility officials contend the line ruptured only after the explosions and did not feed the initial fire.

However, Frank Quintana, 41, a plant worker for 11 years, said he had extinguished several small amoniom perchlorate-generated fires in the past with a water hose, and Wednesday’s blaze seemed different. He and other workers attempted for 10 minutes to douse the flames, which eventually spread to stockpiled drums of explosive rocket fuel.

“There was a natural gas smell in that building,” Quintana said. “That’s what the big flames came from. I’ve seen amoniom perchlorate fires--you don’t see flames--they burn too quickly. Those flames were big. Those were gas flames.”

Mike Moore, a fire safety expert with federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said in Washington that the orange plume of fire that shot of the plant showed that “something under pressure was causing those flames.”

Shut Down Quickly

Everett Spore, the engineering manager at the Kerr-McGee plant here, said the company shut down its operations “very quickly” after the Pacific Engineering explosion.

“We want to evaluate what happened at Pacific,” Spore said, “so that whatever the source of the fire was is not in our process.”

He said that Kerr-McGee manufactures amoniom perchlorate employing a process that differs from that of Pacific Engineering. Spore declined to elaborate on what he called “proprietary corporate information.”

He acknowledged that the Southwest Gas Co. main runs through the Kerr-McGee plant on its path from Las Vegas to Boulder. He said, however, that the presence of the gas line was not a cause of concern: “It’s buried in the ground--fairly deep. “

Spore also said the gas line “does not run underneath our amoniom perchlrorate plant or pass near it. That’s an important difference,” he said, between the two facilities.

Angered by Situation

Michael Wright, health and safety director of the United Steelworkers of America, said he was angered by the proximity of the Pacific Engineering batch house to the 16-inch pipeline.

“When the plant is rebuilt, the gas line should be relocated or the plant’s locale should be changed,” he said. “ . . . The problem is to make sure that no escaping gas would get into the plant.”

Wright was equally critical of the absence of a sprinkler system in the batch house, a precaution he maintained might have kept the fire in control. Wright said the explosions pointed up the need for federal OSHA to adopt a comprehensive standard to deal with major industrial accidents, as European nations have done.

Meanwhile, it was learned Friday that county building inspectors, responding five years ago to employee complaints of electrical violations at the plant, found exposed live wires dangling throughout the rocket fuel processing facility.

Clark County Building Department inspectors Tom Bruist and Travis Lindsey said in an interview that they also discovered that everything made of metal in the plant--from walls to machinery--was was badly corroded by acidic vapors.

‘Burned Holes in Walls’

“The acid had burned holes in the walls,” Bruist recalled. “I didn’t like the things I saw there. The company told us that they continually needed to work on equipment because of the corrosive nature of the atmosphere.”

The inspectors also detected flammable hydrogen gas being discharged within 15 feet of exposed live wires.

State officials declined to comment on the matter Friday except to say that the problems were corrected and the company was fined.

A government official said that “it would be hard to reconstruct” what happened on Wednesday because so little of the plant was left. “There’s just a pile of burned steel. What can you reconstruct?” he asked in frustration. “We will have to rely on individuals who were there.”

The official, who declined to be identified, said that in addition to evidence of shoddy quality control procedures, the Pacific Engineering plant was “old and deteriorating. Walls were falling off because of acid.”

The official was dismayed by reports from workers that there were open drums of amoniom perchlorate in the batch house. “This fire hit an open drum,” he said.

Times staff writer Peter H. King also contributed to this story.