Playing With Fire at Rockwell : Santa Susana facility is obliged to be more forthcoming in the wake of a fatal explosion

The explosion that rocked the Santa Susana Field Laboratory in the Simi Hills last July killed two workers and seriously injured a third. It was also forceful enough to blow apart a 10-by-12-foot steel test stand and trigger a 15-acre brush fire.

The explosion’s victims were preparing for a controlled burn of a catalyst used in solid rocket fuel when something went wrong. The precise cause was not immediately known. “It was not supposed to explode,” Rockwell International spokesman Paul Sewell said then. The field laboratory is owned by Rockwell’s Rocketdyne division.

The cause is still something of a mystery, but we know more about some important related matters.

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health has cited Rockwell for four “willful-serious” workplace-safety violations. These are the state agency’s most severe sanctions, each of which carries a penalty of $50,000.

State officials issued the citations for the following reasons:

* Failing to provide distance or barrier separations between work stations to prevent explosives in one station from being set off by materials in another.

* Failing to implement an injury-and-illness education program with specific training on new hazards involving explosives, and failing to inspect new hazards.

* Processing and blending static-electricity-sensitive explosives in 17% humidity when regulations call for humidity conditions above 20%.

* Testing potentially explosive rocket fuel ingredients next to a site where scrap had been burned without waiting the required 48 hours to make sure the fire was extinguished.

Rocketdyne officials are in the middle of a 15-day period in which they could decide to appeal. Sewell has said that the Santa Susana facility no longer conducts such fuel tests, and that comes as welcome news. But it is also incumbent upon Rocketdyne to publicly address each of the four workplace-safety matters and what the company has done or will do about them. Such a serious accident demands nothing less.