One person has died and four were injured Tuesday after an explosion at an Army ammunition plant in Missouri, officials said.
The Army Joint Munitions Command says the explosion happened Tuesday at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence.
We're just getting word of a fatal explosion at the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant in Independence, Missouri.
There was also an explosion at this plant in March 2011.
Mark Carrick, deputy fire chief in Independence, told the AP that the plant has its own fire brigade that is working on the explosion. Founded in 1941, the plant employs 29 people from the Army Civilian Service and one soldier, along with an unknown number of contractors.
The scale of the Lake City blast shown in news helicopter video initially suggests that the scale of the explosion is much smaller and probably less critical than the 2014 Belgian facility explosion, which damaged more than 100 nearby buildings and only avoided a loss of life by occurring after all plant workers had left work at the end of the day.
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Scott Allen with the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration says he has few immediate details about the blast. In the past 17 years, it has manufactured more than 17 billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition at the Independence plant. The plant makes small-caliber ammunition and tests its reliability, and it operates the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation test center.
NASDAQ reports that Orbital ATK is the largest manufacturer of small-caliber ammunition for the U.S. Department of Defense. A mixing cell is a building area where the components of munitions are mixed together.
Orbital announced Monday that it has received a $92 million order from the Army for 5.56 mm and 7.62 mm ammunition, adding that Orbital and the Army "have made significant upgrades at the facility in recent years that have enhanced product quality; and performance, efficiency and operational improvements for safety and environmental stewardship".
Dennis said the plant has approximately 1,800 government and contractor employees.
Federal investigators fined the plant for workplace safety issues in 2008, 2011 and 2012.
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