Ammunition Explosion Levels 1 Building, Shakes Saugus Preschool; No One Is Hurt

Teacher Carol Upthegrove didn’t think twice about the shaking that her Saugus preschool underwent Friday morning when Air Force ammunition pellets exploded about 500 yards outside the classroom door.

“When you work with a bunch of 2 1/2- and 3-year-olds all day like I do, you feel rumbles all the time,” said Upthegrove.

Over a ridge from her Golden Triangle Road school, 150 pounds of a boron, magnesium and potassium nitrate mixture blew up when an electric oven apparently malfunctioned shortly after 9:30 a.m. The explosion destroyed the small building in which the chemicals were housed.

Damage to the facilities of the Bermite Division of the Whittaker Corp. was estimated at $25,000 by Los Angeles County firefighters who extinguished a fire that followed the blast.

No one was injured and Bermite officials said no other facilities at the 1,000-acre manufacturing site at 22116 Soledad Canyon Road were threatened.

Causes a Scare

But the blast caused a scare, according to firemen who observed the explosion from about a mile and a half away. Firefighters said that, when they telephoned the Bermite plant to ask about the huge cloud of smoke they could see, they were told that several persons had been injured and another explosives-filled building was threatened.

That prompted officials to send six engine companies, two rescue helicopters and two ground rescue squads to the scene.

The resulting commotion caught the attention of Upthegrove and of Angie Benhamou, owner of the Four Seasons Child Day Care Center.

“We heard the helicopters and thought they were searching for prisoners who might have escaped from the prison we have out here,” Benhamou said in reference to the Pitchess Honor Rancho. “We made sure the doors were locked.”

Damage to Building

William Frankenberger, Bermite’s spokesman, said company workers did not hear or feel the explosion either. He said Bermite’s preliminary estimate of damage to the 11-foot-by-14-foot, tin-sided building was $2,000.

Fire Capt. Larry Wild, who happened to be on a Saugus hilltop north of the Bermite site with his firefighters at the time of the blast, said his men were surprised that they had not heard it from their vantage point.

“It laid that building wide open and threw material from it 100 feet,” he said. “We sure saw the smoke.”

Wild said special brush clearance at the shed site next to a Bermite-owned street named “Photoflash Road” prevented the fire from spreading before firefighters reached the scene. “Bermite is a very well-run place. They have bunkers and berms and good brush clearance. They are very responsive to everything the Fire Department asks them to do,” he said.

“In terms of danger, I feel that the transportation of hazardous materials on the freeway is of much more concern to us than Bermite.”

Firefighters Called Once a Year

Fire officials said they are called to the Bermite plant an average of once a year for fires or explosions. Blasts in 1978 killed one worker and injured three others, and a 1982 explosion and fire sent a plume of toxic gas over the sparsely populated area.

In 1983, a fire that also was apparently started by a chemical-drying oven destroyed a building and caused $10,000 damage.

Frankenberger said the 375-employee company has limited the type of explosives it produces at the Saugus site because of encroaching urbanization. Nearby development along Soledad Canyon Road includes a business and professional center, a bowling alley and a roller skating rink. The Saugus Speedway and swap meet area is also close by.

“We have highly combustible material, but we have no high explosive,” Frankenberger said. “We supply ignition pellets for Air Force ammunition rounds but we don’t make the warheads at present.”

Besides the pellets, the company, which has operated the Saugus plant since 1942, produces flares designed to divert missiles from jet fighters, Frankenberger said.