Safety Stand Down at Picatinny emphasizes safety, need for constant caution

By Mr. Eric Kowal (Picatinny)April 22, 2015

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(Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - A Safety Stand Down day was held April 20 at the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), serving as an annual refresher to keep safety in the forefront both on and off duty.

The meeting was mandatory for all personnel involved with hands-on energetic and non-energetic laboratory, prototyping and experimental evaluation operations, as well as their supervisory chains. In the context of defense research, "energetics" is a short-hand term for materials such as explosives, propellants and pyrotechnics.

Doyle (Butch) Wooten, Safety Chief for the U.S. Army Materiel Command, attended the gathering. "When you are conducting your day-to-day operations, never assume something will be done or has been done by someone else, always cover down and double check," Wooten told the several hundred engineers in attendance.

The Safety Stand Down was divided into two sessions. The morning session was in the Lindner Conference Center. Topics included accident summaries and lessons learned, proper handling and storage of hazardous energy and materials, open burning, geomagnetic storm awareness, and grounding and bonding requirements.

In the afternoon, groups dispersed into individual branch meetings, where emergency action plans were reviewed and updated.

The morning session began with a greeting from the ARDEC Director, John F. Hedderich III.

"Safety is all about you, the operator," Hedderich said.

"You have always been my heroes," Hedderich said to the day-to-day energetics operators. "People do not realize how important it is what you do."

Hedderich's comments were timely. Two U.S. Army civilian employees were injured in an incident March 18 that occurred at a research facility here. The employees were taken to a hospital and later released.

The employees, explosives technicians, were conducting an operation on an explosive sub-munition, which can be described as a one of several munitions within a projectile.

"Your work is so important to the warfighter's cause in the end. They are the reason we do what we do," Hedderich said.

Regarding a more recent and different kind of threat unrelated to internal research, the installation's Senior Commander, Brig. Gen. Patrick W. Burden, spoke about a foreign national who was detained April 17 at the Picatinny Arsenal truck gate.

A citizen of the Czech Republic, the driver attempted to enter the installation, producing an expired passport as identification. Upon inspection of the vehicle, the Picatinny Arsenal Police Department and security personnel suspected the vehicle may present an explosive hazard. The installation was evacuated as a precaution.

The driver was later taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and is to undergo deportation hearings, according to an ICE spokesman.

"If you see something that doesn't look right, say something," Burden told the attendees at the morning Stand Down session.

The general was referring to a U.S. Army anti-terrorism awareness program called iWatch. The purpose of the program is to focus and encourage Army-wide community awareness and out-reach efforts to address important topics related to protecting our communities from terrorist acts.

"Regardless of where you sit, even at the lowest level, you have the responsibility to react," the general added.

"We cannot assume that everything is OK. We want to make sure you come to work safely and go home safely."

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