Worker dies in explosion at Tucson scrap yard

An employee at a south-side scrap yard was killed Wednesday in an explosion that occurred when he cut into a metal object that turned out to be military ordnance, Tucson police said.

Police said it wasn’t known what the ordnance was doing at the scrap yard or how it got there.

Sgt. Kimberly Bay, a Tucson Police Department spokeswoman, said the incident was reported at about 12:45 p.m. when a South Tucson police officer was driving in the 600 bock of East 36th Street, near South Euclid Avenue, and someone flagged him down and told him about the explosion.

The explosion occurred at Tucson Iron & Metal, 690 E. 36th St.

The officer went into the scrap yard and found the worker’s body, Bay said. Tucson police and Tucson fire crews were called, as were members of the police and Davis-Monthan Air Force Base bomb squads.

Authorities evacuated employees from the business and searched for other ordnance in the yard. No other ordnance was found, Bay said.

The investigation is in the very early stages, but the explosion appears to have been an industrial accident, she said. Detectives will be investigating how the ordnance arrived at the yard.

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No one else was injured. The man’s identity is being withheld until next of kin have been notified.

A D-M spokeswoman, 1st Lt. Erin Ranaweera, said the base’s bomb squad has a partnership with TPD’s bomb squad and the unit was called in to help in the investigation.

“Whenever there is an explosion of ordnance, there are always pieces left over — fragments of metal that may not have exploded completely,” Ranaweera said.

“We are collecting all the remnants and will dispose of them safely in a controlled location,” she said.

TPD’s bomb unit is picking them up “with us on the scene,” she said.

D-M does not take any ordnance to scrap yards, Ranaweera said. “We do not move our ordnances. Ordnances are not metal to be reused for recycling,” she said.

This is the second workplace death in Tucson in a month. On Aug. 21, one worker was killed and a second suffered critical injuries when a wall of a building being demolished for a city road-widening project collapsed on them at a construction site at 314 E. Grant Road.