Rumors Run Rife in Community : Titan rocket: Town residents knew something was wrong when ambulances rushed to the test site. They complain about being left to guess what had happened.

For people who live next to a rocket test site, it is not unusual to hear an explosion or to see a rising cloud of smoke on the horizon. But residents of this isolated Mojave Desert mining town Friday were soon tipped off that something was wrong at the Astronautics Laboratory.

Ambulances hurtled down 20 Mule Team Road toward the laboratory entrance at Rocket Site Road. Some residents on the southern edge of Boron had seen a large mushroom-shaped cloud rise from the testing site, a complex of water towers and buildings on a barren mountain five miles south of town.

Although Boron is the community closest to the blaze, most residents spent Friday trying to guess what had happened at the secretive plant. Rumors abounded. A few people had heard about a rocket falling from a crane. Reports of death tolls varied widely, from none to as many as 20. Almost nobody knew that the cloud that blew briefly toward town before shifting east contained toxic hydrogen chloride. Air Force officials said later that there was no threat to the area.

“It’s frightening to know something like that can happen and we are not going to be told anything,” said Linda Caywood, 34, a clerk at the Boron Medical Center.

Caywood’s co-worker, Kathleen Tucker, 44, added: “I didn’t know what had happened until CBS called here. We used to assume that our government would tell us if something toxic is out there but they don’t, we’re smarter now.”

Dong Kang, a cashier at the R Rocket Site Mini-Market about a mile from the Astronautics Entrance, said the market had received one brief, confused order to evacuate. He said the order came from someone who identified himself as a plant official. Uncertain who the man was, Kang kept the store open.

Next door, Vivienne Burgess, manager of the Desert Lake Apartments, had also heard something about an evacuation. She, too, decided to stay.

Like many residents in the tight-knit community of 3,000 people, Burgess took to the telephone to learn more about the explosion, calling friends whose relatives worked at the plant. “Rumors, you hear all kinds of things, 55 different stories,” she said.

“They said missiles and rockets had blown up. I heard there was one girl whose dad is trapped in there. But they say he’s all right now.”

Officials of the Muroc Unified School District ordered students to be kept indoors for about two hours.

California 58, which runs through Boron, and nearby U.S. 395 were closed by California Highway Patrol officers while the toxic cloud passed overhead.

By early afternoon, when the highway had been reopened and the cloud had long dissipated, several locals gathered at Boron’s handful of restaurants to discuss the accident. Although a federal prison, a solar power plant and the famous Borax mine surround Boron, most agreed that the nearby air base is difficult to ignore.

“When the planes crash the sound barrier, we don’t even jump any more,” said Jennie Emerich, 57, a 30-year resident and a waitress at the Coffee Mug cafe. “We hadn’t heard they were testing anything. We knew something was wrong but we didn’t know what. Gradually, people started coming in and sharing information.”

Life seemed to have returned to normal by Friday evening when the Boron High School football team opened its season by hosting a team from Camp Kilpatrick, a Los Angeles County Probation Department school. About 1,000 people attended.