Firm Cited in Rocket Fuel Blast; $36,455 Fine Urged

The Nevada Division of Occupational Safety and Health on Thursday cited Pacific Engineering & Production Co. for a host of safety violations and recommended a $36,455 fine in connection with the May 4 explosion that leveled its Henderson, Nev., plant.

The blast resulted in two deaths, 300 injuries and $73 million in property damage in the adjoining community.

Pacific Engineering was cited for four alleged “willful violations,” nine “serious violations” and 17 “other than serious” violations of Nevada safety and health laws.

The alleged willful violations included an absence of manufacturing controls, resulting in increased danger of fire and/or explosion; failure to develop emergency evacuation and response procedures; inadequate access to respirators by workers, and procedures that exposed workers to potentially hazardous levels of toxic chemicals, suffocation and death.

Serious violations included improper storage of ammonium perchlorate; location of a processing building too close to a natural gas pipeline, and inadequate firefighting capability and training.

Ammonium perchlorate is a fuel oxidizer manufactured at the plant and used in rockets in the nation’s defense and space programs.

The 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 in which the Pacific Engineering facility was located. On Wednesday, the company announced that it will rebuild the plant in southern Utah and vowed to resume production by Feb. 1, 1989.

Fred Gibson, chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Engineering, declared in an interview Thursday that “the proposed citations . . . are all wholly without merit. These are unsubstantiated allegations that have not yet been proven.”

“We have asked for the evidence, data, information, whatever OSHA used as a basis for the citations and OSHA has absolutely refused to give us anything. It’s our understanding these allegations are all based on interviews post-May 4. The plant was totally destroyed so there is little physical evidence that could have been used.” He said the company will contest the citations.

Michael Wright, health and safety director of the United Steelworkers of America, the union that represents workers at the plant, praised the action. “I think Nevada OSHA did a pretty good job of identifying the things that led to the accident and made the plant unsafe,” he said in a telephone interview.

“But the question is why couldn’t they have done that before it blew up. . . . OSHA was in the plant 11 times over the years. They could have identified these problems at any time.”

“Part of the reason that Nevada OSHA had failed” to issue stronger citations earlier, Wright said, was because of a lack of federal or state standards for highly hazardous chemical facilities. He said that federal OSHA began the process of adopting such a standard after the Bhopal chemical plant disaster in India in 1984 “but they were stopped by the Office of Management and Budget.” He said that later this summer the union will once again petition the agency to promulgate such a standard.

Thursday’s citations do not specifically address what caused the explosion.

Initially, some investigators speculated that a leak from the gas pipeline was the cause.

However, on July 15, Clark County Fire Chief Roy Parrish said the disaster was sparked by “spewing molten iron from an acetylene torch” being used by a worker hanging new siding on a building in which ammonium perchlorate was being processed.

Wright disputed that, saying that the welders were 70 feet from where the fire was first spotted.

Thursday’s action was disclosed by officials of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Nevada. James A. Barnes, director of Nevada’s division of industrial relations, said state laws prohibit the agency from disclosing any information about citations they have issued.