The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is blaming the operators of a West Reading, Berks County, candy company for not keeping workers safe as rescuers are sharing their stories of the once-in-a-lifetime call for help.
Back on March 24, the R.M. Palmer Candy Company exploded. Seven people didn't make it out alive and now OSHA says the chocolate maker is at fault for those deaths and injuries.
Reports of a possible gas leak were made to those who ran the R.M. Palmer factory, but it was never evacuated, according to OSHA. This isn't the only error the safety administration says put workers at risk, but it is what led to the deaths of seven people.
Search and rescue teams sifted through the debris for days looking for missing workers and trying to find a cause.
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Help came in all forms from firefighters, police, medical and specially trained search and rescue teams. One team traveled from Montgomery County and is quick to point out that their squad was in the right place at the right time.
"When it exploded all the material went up and the floors exploded upward, but then came back down," one team member told NBC10. This made the tangled mess not just difficult to sort through but dangerous for those trying to find survivors.
The grid for the search teams started from the outside and moved toward the center of the building as they looked for air pockets.
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Burst pipes were still gushing and the water level continued to rise which made it impossible to send in search dogs.
In the early morning hours of the search efforts, all of the manpower on the scene made its way to the center of the building and into what appeared to be the basement.
John Mahon of the Montgomery County search crew was one of the men who went in and described the scary moments to NBC10.
"You're up to your belly button in water, and I'm a short guy. Your radio is now under the water, and you're crouching under things or going over things. Everything you touch is pulling material out of the ceiling. So, one point I grab a pipe because I'm falling and there's a giant slab of concrete that falls," Mahon said. He was yelling and waiting to hear any sounds of life. Finally, he said he heard someone yelling.
It took a little more than 20 minutes before teams were able to get the woman 12 feet to the surface and into an ambulance.
Soon after the explosion, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) announced that it was an underground gas pipeline that had exploded.
Workers who survived reported that there was a smell of gas before the explosion, and one family filed a wrongful death lawsuit that placed blame on the candy maker.
In making the citations public this week, OSHA said that R.M. Palmer had electrical violations, record-keeping issues and an exit was not labeled clearly.
The most serious offense was that the candy maker did not remove workers from the manufacturing plant despite workers' concerns, OSHA said.
OSHA levied fines that totaled just under $44,000 against the company.
“Seven workers will never return home because the R.M. Palmer Co. did not evacuate the facility after being told of a suspected gas leak. The company could have prevented this horrific tragedy by following required safety procedures," OSHA said.
"RM Palmer stands by its safety program and policies and has already contested the OSHA citations in this matter. The Company disputes each of the citations and contends that the agency had no basis to issue these citations as stated," the candy company said in a statement to NBC10. "Until the NTSB’s investigation is complete, there is simply no basis to evaluate OSHA’s statement that an evacuation would have prevented the seven tragic deaths that occurred."
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