Warnings for emergency responders kept from Area 51 workers

[NVMojo]

May 21, 2006

In legal battles that spanned a decade, the government refused to acknowledge that fumes from open-pit burning of stealth coatings used on its radar-evading warplanes harmed workers at the secret Area 51 installation along the dry Groom Lake bed where high-tech aircraft are tested.

Yet in an unclassified May 19, 2005, "Safety Supplement" that was pulled along with other technical documents last month from a Web site at Robins Air Force Base, Ga., emergency responders are warned about the danger of inhaling "hazardous byproducts of burning wreckage" of F-117A Nighthawk fighter jets.

"Do not use portable gas rescue saw in an explosive atmosphere. This may cause ... (a) fire resulting in injury or death to pilot and rescue personnel," the supplement warns.

The nation's fleet of 52 of these black jets are coated with the same hazardous materials -- stuff that gives off cancer-causing dioxins when ignited -- that former Area 51 workers have said were stored in 55-gallon drums and hauled from Lockheed hangars in Southern California to the Groom Lake installation during the 1980s and burned in open pits.

more...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/May-21-Sun-2006/news/7488359.html