DOYLINE, La. :- Weather could complicate the transfer of roughly 6 million pounds of explosives that were haphazardly stored at an industrial site in northwestern Louisiana and led to the evacuation of a small town, a state police spokeswoman said Monday.
If lightning is spotted within
five miles of the site, authorities will suspend efforts that began on
Saturday to move the artillery propellant, Lt. Julie Lewis said.
Light rain fell at midday in the vicinity of the site near the town of Doyline. No lightning was expected Monday, but thunderstorms were forecast for Tuesday.
Officials estimate that more than
half of Doyline's 800 residents heeded police advice to evacuate in
advance of the cleanup at the Explo Systems Inc. site. Col. Mike Edmondson, commander of Louisiana State Police,
said the material is stable and would need an ignition source to
explode. The precautions were taken because officials fear that any
spark could set off a huge explosion of the material, which they said
was stored improperly in a relatively small area.
One of several residents who
relocated to a nearby state park expressed exasperation at the sheer
volume of explosive material, which is more than authorities initially
estimated.
"We got outside the evacuation
area when they said there was a million pounds. Now it's six million,"
said Frank Peetz, 71, who was staying with his wife in a camper. "Maybe
we ought to be up in Arkansas somewhere."
Edmondson was hesitant to
estimate when it would be safe for Doyline residents to return home. He
also said state police weren't sure how much damage an explosion of the
material could cause, even after consulting with Department of Defense
officials.
"Nobody can tell you what 6 million pounds of explosives would do if it went up," Edmondson said in a telephone interview. "And I don't want to find out."
Edmonson said that Explo Systems leases and controls about 400 acres
of the 15,000-acre Camp Minden, a former ammunition plant that now is a
state-owned industrial site and home to a National Guard training
facility. He estimated that the M6 propellant was stored in an area of
less than 10 acres.
It was discovered there, stored
indoors and outdoors, sometimes in containers that had spilled open, by a
trooper following up on an October explosion at the facility.
Explo is now the subject of a criminal investigation, state police said.
The company has not publicly
commented on the investigation. Its website says the company has been in
existence for seven years and that its management has been
"demilitarizing" and recovering explosives and propellant for 15 years.
Authorities had initially
estimated the total of M6 stored at the site at 1 million pounds after
the first investigator saw cardboard boxes on long rows of pallets
behind a building. Police found more stacked in sheds and warehouses
when crews returned Saturday to begin moving the boxes into bunkers
about two miles away on the former munitions site, state police
spokesman Capt. Doug Cain said Sunday.
"It wasn't in their storage magazines. They had it hidden on the
property, away from the storage magazines where we would expect to find
it," Cain said.
Edmonson said "it was stuffed in corners. It was stacked all over."
He said that in two days, crews had moved nearly a million pounds
from the tightest-packed buildings into approved containers and onto 27
tractor-trailers to move to storage bunkers. Another 250,000 pounds had
been moved a safe distance from the bulk of the material. It won't all
have to be moved into bunkers to let people return home — the evacuation
could be lifted once the propellant is divided into amounts that won't
threaten the town if some ignites, with each area a safe distance from
the others, Edmonson said.
Company officials could not be
reached Sunday. The owners were believed to be returning Monday from a
business trip to South Korea, but a manager has been working with state
police from the start, Edmonson said.
A call to a Shreveport attorney who represents the company was not returned Monday.
Doyline was used to film some scenes for the HBO vampire series "True Blood."
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