Fire Out of Control at Military Flare-Manufacturing Plant in La.
August 16, 2006
A plant that makes military flares burned out of control near Minden, La., on Aug. 15, as firefighters waited a mile away in case it set off an explosive-filled magazine.
"We're not going to send anybody in to try to fight it,'' Col. Carl V. Thompson, deputy post commander at Camp Minden, said early Aug. 15.
The fire started with an explosion as about two pounds of powder were ground into tiny granules on the afternoon of Aug. 14, said Steve Shows, vice president and general manager of Valentec Systems Inc.
He said that explosion set fire to the roof, allowing the blaze to spread through a 100-foot building with foot-thick firewalls every 20 feet.
Two buildings within 60 feet also caught fire, Shows said.
Nobody was injured. Because it is dangerous, the "granulating'' process was controlled by workers at the other end of the building, Thompson said.
He said two firefighters were overcome by heat exhaustion and given intravenous fluids.
Firefighters were pulled back at least a mile when the fire threatened a magazine holding a substantial amount of explosives, he said. Thompson said he was trying to find out how much explosive the magazine held.
Valentec makes 40-mm parachute flares, which are shot out of mortars and then float down to illuminate nighttime battlefields, Thompson said.
Camp Minden was the Louisiana Army Ammunition Plant until that was decommissioned in 1994. Louisiana took the site over from the federal government last year.
Valentec occupies a 325,000-square-foot building where the military's large-caliber munitions were produced until 1994.
The Aug. 14 explosion is the second in as many months at Camp Minden, a mixture of military operations and commercial tenants.
Goex Inc., the only black powder manufacturer in North America, was shut down in July after a small explosion, thought to have been sparked by a grass fire, destroyed equipment in the corning mill used to granulate the black powder.
Nobody was hurt, but Goex President Mick Fahringer has said he expects the plant to be out of commission for three to six months. The 27 full-time and two part-time employees remain on the payroll during repairs.
Susan Jordan, who lives across the street from the camp's entrance on U.S. Highway 80, stood on her porch Monday and looked at the smoke rising high over the plant.
"When I saw that I didn't think much of it,'' she said. "I guess we're just used to it.''
