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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 1, 1992                   TAG: 9201020166
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: HOLIDAY 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

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AT ARSENAL, SAFETY GETS TOP PRIORITY

PREDICTABLY, your Dec. 17 editorial ("Still questions: The Radford Arsenal accident") continues your practice of presuming to criticize and to offer advice based on limited knowledge of the facts.

Unfortunate incidents such as the one in October are throughly investigated by a team of knowledgeable experts. Your conclusions and subsequent recommendations could have been much more authentic had you waited until after the Army investigator's report was available.

As a retired Hercules employee, I know from personal experience that safety has absolute top priority in all plant operations. What standard of performance do you think is acceptable? One error in 10,000 repetitions; one in 100,000; how about one in 1 million?

Yet at Radford, production schedules requiring in excess of 1 million repetitive operational cycles can occur in a few short weeks. Such things are performed routinely without error, as attested by the arsenal's excellent safety record.

I recognize that criticism and controversy will sell more newspapers than positive articles. But if you must criticize and advise, please do so from knowledge - not supposition. LESLIE PUGH FLOYD

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