Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 23, 1993 TAG: 9302230040
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Michael Stowe
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NITRO BLAST A NEAR-WAR EXPERIENCE
Many times since I started covering the Radford Army Ammunition Plant six months ago I've left the paper's Christiansburg office saying something like: "I'll be at lunch if the arsenal blows up."It was a joke. It never crossed my mind that it could actually happen.
On Tuesday, reality hit - hard.
I was tapping away at the computer when a reverberating boom startled me out of my writing tunnel vision.
At first I thought it was thunder. Others knew better. They'd heard similar sounds before. "That was the arsenal," said fellow reporter Madelyn Rosenberg.
We made a mad dash for the front door and peered down the road looking for smoke or any other signs of an explosion.
Nothing.
Back inside, I naively asked: "Does this mean people might be dead?"
It just didn't seem possible. I'd heard stories about the ground-shaking blasts from the propellant plant, but no one had ever mentioned death or injury.
The stories I'd heard were told in almost a bragging manner. Things like: "In 1985 there was an explosion so big that I felt it at my house 30 miles away." I never heard that two men were killed in that nitroglycerin explosion.
As it turned out, no one was hurt in Tuesday's explosion that destroyed a building in the No. 2 nitroglycerin area.
I'd heard so many stories about arsenal explosions in the 1960s and 1970s that they seemed almost routine back then. But for some reason I figured technology was now so advanced that explosions would happen no more.
Now I know better.
There is, however, some thanks for technology. The explosion occurred in a building that was fully automated and remote controlled.
A few years ago, two people would have been working with the nitroglycerin and most surely they would be dead.
The newsroom was near chaos after the blast. A reporter and photographer were sent to the arsenal, an airplane was chartered so the paper could get aerial pictures of the explosion site.
Editors began calling Roanoke alerting them of a possible disaster in the New River Valley and three reporters made continuous phone calls trying to reach someone at the arsenal who could supply some information.
About two hours after the explosion, we got word that there had been no employees involved and no casualties.
A wave of relief settled over the newsroom and once again it was business as usual.
But as I laid awake in my bed Tuesday night, I once again realized how close I'd been to disaster.
It scared me. It frightened me the same way war does. I've never been to war and probably will never have to go.
But from now on I'll never forget how close to war I live, thanks to the Radford Army Ammunition plant.
Michael Stowe covers the town of Blacksburg, and business in the New River Valley.