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Fire in missile room not found for 5 days

A fire broke out inside the equipment room of a launch facility that houses a nuclear armed intercontinental ballistic missile at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyo., on May 23.

No damage was done to the nuclear missile and no one was hurt at the unmanned launch facility, said Air Force Space Command officials.

The damage from the fire, which extinguished itself, was not discovered until five days after it started during a thunderstorm that temporarily knocked out power at the site, said Maj. Laurie Arellano, a Space Command spokeswoman.

An investigation board found the fire was started by a faulty battery charger that created a plume of hydrogen gas inside the facility. The gas was ignited by a spark from a loose connection inside the charger when the facility switched over to battery power during the storm.

The fire, which caused over $1 million of damage to equipment, burned through several cables that lead to the nuclear-armed ICBM. However, the fire never made it out of the equipment room and into the launch tube.

If the fire had made it to the nuclear missile, there was no risk of an inadvertent launch, explosion or release of nuclear material due to its advanced design, Arellano said. Despite the fire the missile was not once taken off alert.

A shotgun storage case also was burned, including the shotgun and the shells, but investigators found the shells didn’t explode.

Missile maintenance personnel discovered soot from the fire when they arrived to fix what they thought was a problem with the missile’s suspension, which the burned cables monitored.

Arellano said it took five days for anyone to check the missile because other priorities outweighed what appeared at the time to be a minor problem.

Since the fire, almost every battery charger has been replaced at launch facilities across the service. Duct tape on wires and the foam insulation inside shotgun cases have also been removed from the launch facilities to reduce the risk of fire.