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DAMASCUS, Ark. (AP) - A fiery explosion that lit the night sky “like daylight*1 rocked ait underground Titan 11 missile silo early today, injuring at least 22 maintenance workers, the Air Force said. The Strategic Air Command would not say whether the missile carried a nuclear warhead or whether any radiation leaked.Authorities evacuated a large area around the site, routing about 1,000 people mostly in the tiny towns of Damascus, Bee Branch and Graves ville.A spokesman for the state Office of Emergency Services said the evacuation stretched for ten miles north in Van Buren County and fivemiles south in Faulkner and Conway counties.Physicists from the state Health Department were sent to the scene to check radiation levels.Tom Mahr, a public information officer at SAC headquarters in Omaha, Neb., said his latest information was that 22 people were injured, is of them seriously enoughto be hospitalized.Sources at the Pentagon said the missile contained a single nuclear warhead, that it was not damaged and that no radiation was leaking.Gov. Bill Clinton said Air Force officials told him that no nuclear explosion had occurred and that none could have occurred in the silohousing the 103-foot-long intercontinental ballistic missile which is capable of delivering this nation's largest hydrogen bomb to a target 6,300 miles away.Clinton, reached at his mother's home in Hot Springs, said officials were trying to determine whether radioactivity was escaping from the silo.“The thing, frankly, is still up in the air as to whether there is any other problem,*’ Clinton said. He said the question of whether radioactivity was leaking was the most significant remaining question, besides the injuries and evacuation.Clinton said SAC officials told himThursday night that a fuel tank in the first stage of the rocket was punctured by “some form of human error, apparently. Clinton said about 10,000 gallons of fuel apparently began leaking.The leak had been discovered Thursday night when officials spotted “smoke billowing from the silo, a police dispatcher said. The site was flooded with water to reduce the possibility of combustion.Kline described the leaking fuel as Aerozine 50, which is not as volatile as the oxidizer that mixes with thefuel to provide the propellant.The governor said he understood the missile silo, which is underground, was only rubble inside.* SEMO EDITION *NEWSBLYTHEVIllE ARK7231bVOL.86-NO. 109 15CENTS 28PAGES FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 19,1980 2 SECTIONS
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Blytheville Courier News
Blytheville, Arkansas, US
Fri, Sep 19, 1980
Page 16
Full Page
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Arkansas S.
AR, USA 14 Feb 2020
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Blytheville Army Air Corps News
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