A Volatile Past : Firm Wooed by City Says Blasts Were Isolated Incidents

A major manufacturing firm, which assembles small explosive devices and is being lured to the city with a multimillion-dollar incentive package, has had a handful of serious safety problems during the past 15 years, according to state records and company officials.

But officials from Newhall-based Special Devices Inc., which makes “initiators” used to trigger automobile air bags and fire missile engines, say safety is their top priority and that the three serious accidents since 1981 were isolated incidents.

“I absolutely think we’re safer than any corner gas station,” company President Thomas Treinen said Wednesday.

Promising a package of tax breaks and other incentives worth an estimated $6 million, a team of city, county and state officials was able to persuade the company to move to Moorpark, bringing more than 500 jobs.

The relocation is not guaranteed, but company and city officials are confident that an environmental impact report on the planned relocation will be released this month and that construction can start by this summer.

To answer initial questions about worker safety and the firm’s use of volatile chemicals, city officials toured the company’s high-tech production plant and reviewed its procedures.

City officials came away satisfied that proper precautions to protect the community would be in place if the company moves to Moorpark, Assistant City Manager Richard Hare said.

“They were very forthcoming,” Hare said.

City leaders were most concerned about a series of explosions at the Newhall plant during the last 15 years that damaged buildings and in one case killed an employee.

In the most recent accident, in October 1993, a chemist working at the firm’s pyrotechnics and explosive ordinance facility lost part of his right hand after two spoonfuls of zirconium potassium perchlorate --a powerful explosive powder--blew up.

The chemist still works at the firm. Treinen said the employee concedes that the accident was probably his fault.

In a 1981 incident, an explosion destroyed much of a building at the company’s Placerita Canyon site. No one was injured.

But a few months later, in March 1982, a worker was killed at the plant in an explosion triggered by sparks from a space heater.

Company officials say they have worked hard to make the workplace safer. For example, much of the mixing of the explosive materials is done by remote control, and the areas in which such work is done are under strict safety controls.

Nevertheless, Treinen said the company and its employees can never ignore the potential danger of the material they use.

“It is hazardous and you have to treat it with respect,” he said.

In addition to the accidents, Moorpark officials also wanted to learn about a 1984 incident in which the Los Angeles Planning Commission nearly revoked the company’s land-use permit. Planning commissioners had learned that another company was dumping toxic waste on property leased from Special Devices.

Moorpark officials were satisfied that the company had nothing to do with the illegal dumping, which was eventually cleaned up.

Treinen said he is bothered that the Planning Commission unfairly linked his company with the incident and added that further monitoring showed no contamination was coming from Special Devices.

The Newhall plant is in a rugged canyon dotted with ranch homes. And neighbors who have lived in the area for decades say they have no complaints about the operation.

“I live about a block from their front gate,” said Bob Kellor, who is also president of the local Chamber of Commerce. “Since I moved here in 1979 I haven’t had a single problem with them, and I don’t know of anyone around here who has either.”

The site for the proposed Moorpark facility was picked, in part, for its rugged isolation, sandwiched on the city’s east end between the highway, the Arroyo-Simi and empty hillsides.

The proposed plant, which could cost about $18 million to build, would initially employ about 500 people, but could eventually have as many as 1,000 workers, company officials said.

Plans for the facility include a corporate headquarters and two manufacturing sites on about 45 acres. The rest of the more than 200 acres of property would not be developed.