EMRTC Explosive Firing Site and Laboratory Personnel Safety Course

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This course covers safety and procedures for the use of explosives in research, development, testing, production, and evaluation activities. Students participate in four days of intensive study that consists of classroom presentations, hands-on laboratory instructions, and firing site demonstrations using iling's explosive testing facilities.

The course has been structured to provide basic knowledge for scientist, engineers, and operating personnel in basic explosive chemistry, safety procedures, and testing of energetic materials. This includes training for explosives laboratory personnel in the proper methods for testing explosives.

s, the slag, and with some imagination, there's the old Silver City smelter. The Silver City Smelter Was Big Operation Reduction Works South of Town Once Employed More Than 200 Men and Women Sit of 1913 Silent Movie By RICHARD PETERSON Daily Press Writer Ore was hand-picked from steam powered conveyer belts by men - and children. The equipment was "the best known to metallurgical science." While families's facilities include a 40-square-mile field laboratory that includes more than 30 separate test sites, gun ranges, and research laboratories.

depended on the oper

• ation for a livelihood. And in
• 1913, a silent movie was filmed at the site by a prominent California movie
• company which later merged with Warner Brothers. It wasEMRTC
• the Silver City Reduction Works, the pride
• of Silver City and which fro a brief time was a b
• oon to the econo, Ordnance Supervisor, EMRTC
• my, making mining in the Grant County possi
• ble in those early years. Some 60 year

s later, there

• is nothing left of the operation. The Silver City Reduction Works went by se
• veral names before it was finally scaped. It was origin

Course Dates

• ally build by th
• e Hearst family

to handle gold and silve

• r ores hauled fro   

m their Pinos Altos

mines. This were difficult years for the operation, and a final crunch came in 1902. The pla

ns was handli
ng just about every o
re it could get
- custom smeltin
g included. And tha
t meant copper wa
s among those ores. Copper, in f

act, was such a v

ital part of the smelter's daily operations that depressed copper market conditions forced a closure of the smelter. That was in April. On June 30, 30, 1903, the plant caught fire and was leveled. Silver City's hopes were dashed since the whole operation was going to be sold and once again put into productions. The sale t