A laboratory technician was killed and another was injured when an explosion and fire hit a remote building on the property of ATK Thiokol near Promontory, Box Elder County.
Steve Watters, a Brigham City man in his mid-40s, was killed in the accident Monday night. A female employee, also listed in her middle 40s, was injured. She was taken by ambulance first to a local hospital, then to the University of Utah Intermountain Burn Center. Thiokol did not release her name.
Although Thiokol manufactures rocket motors and produces many tons of propellant for the shuttle boosters and other space vehicles, no propellant was involved in the accident, according to the company.
ATK, state and federal experts were forming an investigative team to search for the cause of the fatal accident — the company's first in 18 years.
The research and development laboratory, Building M-590, is a large structure, but only the two employees were in it at the time of the incident, about 10:45 p.m., according to a press release by corporate spokesman Steve Wold.
The building is about seven miles north of the main facilities close to U-83. No NASA work was involved.
"ATK is saddened" by the incident, Wold said. "On-site emergency fire and rescue personnel immediately responded to the incident."
Local spokeswoman Melodie deGuibert said Watters had been an employee of the company since the late 1970s.
"We don't know what caused the fire," she said. "They weren't in any kind of production operation. . . . They were in the process of cleaning some filters in that building."
ATK Thiokol's fire department responded as soon as alarms went off, she said. Watters was dead when rescuers arrived. "We do not know what killed him, whether it was a blast or fire or what."
DeGuibert did not know the female employee's condition.
This was the first fatality at the rocket-making plant since December 1987, she added.
Grief counselors were available to firefighters, emergency medical personnel and other employees, she said. Some production work, where distractions could be dangerous, was temporarily halted.
"There was some damage to the building, obviously, but we haven't ascertained the whole amount," deGuibert added. Damage was confined to the one building, which was cordoned off. Structural engineers were to inspect the facility.
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