Industrial Negligence or Capital Liquidity?

[Citadel]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

R.M. PALMER CANDY FACTORY EXPLOSION

 

 

March 25, 2023

Attn Fire Chief Chad Moyer

 

 

Dear Chief Moyer;

Before anything I would like to express my condolences to the families of the victims and to the city residents of West Reading.  I am aware a loss of this magnitude can have an impact on a small town like yours in more ways than one.

 

I am at present the Senior Editor of West Coast Midnight Run™ publication and I am also presently a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of California (Mechanical Engineering with years of experience in construction and A/E design of commercial and industrial facilities). The R.M. Palmer factory explosion came to my attention because a couple of years ago (roughly) I applied with them for a position in marketing and business development.  Aside from an engineering background, I have an MBA and years of experience in marketing. I am somewhat familiar with the company, so the incident reported in the news on Friday March 24th jumped out at me (explosion of a
chocolate factory in West Reading, PA).

 

The Associated Press newswires are reporting that employees at the factory including maintenance personnel knew about a “gas leak” and reported it to their supervisors who reassured them it was “being taken care of and it was nothing”.  The AP news piece reports that local resident Mr. Frank Gonzalez’ “son had quit a few months ago ‘because he didn’t like the smell of the gas that was in there’ and that both his son and nephew had complained about the smell to plant supervisors who responded “It’s being handled.  Don’t worry about it”.  Other employees had also complained including Ms. Arelis Rivera Santiago.  The same AP news report states that UGI gas utilities spokesperson Joseph Swope had indicated following the explosion that completely destroyed the factory “we did not receive any calls regarding a gas leak or gas order prior to the incident”.

 

My question to you and your fellow firefighters and Samantha Kaag, the City Mayor: West Reading is a small town and seems to be one of a tightly knit community, is it possible that the gas leak has been ongoing for weeks or months at this facility and no workers at the plant called the Fire Department after work and requested some guidance on whether or not the situation is dangerous???

 

Employees that work on the factory floor are trained to follow rules and regulations (many pertaining to food safety and others pertaining to equipment safety) if this leak had been ongoing for more than a few days, regardless of what the supervisors say to their employees, would the employees not have reported this or at the very least inquired with someone at City Hall (Plan Check, Engineering Office, Business Licensing Department) or any one of several other departments like The Police or the Fire Department??!!!!

 

Employees that work on factory floors especially food manufacturing know some equipment, like boilers and high-pressure gas lines, are dangerous because they are clearly marked, would no one have been concerned enough – in these days of cost cutting knowing the managers could be cutting corners is a hallmark of doing business – especially considering all the food recalls we had in recent years that made big headlines, so NO ONE BOTHERED TO CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT AFTER HOURS JUST TO CALM THEIR NERVES OR BE REASSURED???

 

Is it possible that no factory employee of RM Palmer knows any relatives or friends who work in the construction trades and sought to ask if this could be a dangerous situation? Just from what I have read in the news thus far, it seems very difficult to believe this was just an accident, an incident of carelessness from staff and management.

 

Aside from clear labeling, most manufacturing systems (especially those that handle fuel or volatile materials) are equipped with sensors and automated alarm systems that either report any drift or variation from parameters via audible alarms, flashing lights and computer reports.  Plus many safety systems shut down critical or dangerous operations automatically when precursors are registered such as gas leaks with gas sensors precisely to mitigate incidents of this nature.  For example to name a specific source, Baumer Sensors in Connecticut provides a complete array of solutions for this type of operating environment.  Other manufacturers, to name a small number, include Foxboro, Square D, Siemens, and Honeywell.

 

 

It is quite possible the factory of R.M. Palmer is not the most modern, yet the technology I am referring to was widely available in the 1990s and I would imagine safety standards and construction codes would have compelled the owners and operators of the facility to upgrade around the year 2000 or 2010 by the latest.

 

I know investigators are researching the explosion and its causes and usually the matter is almost always categorized as either negligence (maintenance or company regulations that require reporting this issue) or incompetence. However there are other possibilities that could be linked to the current financial liquidity of the company or their obligations to debtors.

 

Knowing the culture of small towns, in your opinion, is the scenario being suggested by the press and news reports (emerging thus far) a realistic chain of events portraying the incident that occurred at RM Palmer’s site?

 

Your response is highly appreciated AND REQUESTED as we are lining up an editorial story in our publication for the public and it will feature these very questions we are asking of you at this time.

 

Kind regards

Pierre Maertin
Director of Marketing and Senior Editor
West Coast Midnight Run™ publication

 

All contents © 2023. All rights reserved.

[Dave2000]

I am computer geek and I have some engineer friends whom I chatted with about this, top question, most obviously, is when was the most recent inspection of the factory systems done?  who inspected what and where are copies of the report they made.  second question:  was there a remote system data loggers and automated sensors on the system and what were their readings for the most recent days before the explosion (essentially like an airline black box system).  If such a system was in place and logging in data, what were the readings and patterns before the accident?  Other questions I would have depend heavily on what was going on at the facility – were staff doing maintenance or modification work on some systems while others were operational?  there is very little you can ask without any knowledge of what was there, the activities at the time and so on.  In the blind, a person can try guessing but you might be far afield.  So far, the authorities have given very few clues as to what happened.  The point is if there was remote system monitoring with data lines fed to another office far from the factory, there might be some valuable information available already but so far all we are getting are news of rescue and clean up.

[Dana Vasquez]

Wanka’s Special Jerk Sauce, extra bold flavor.

On a serious note, shieeeet, another reason for the workers at that plant to get a 1 cent raise from the union bosses

[Rick Ortiz]

no big secret here, most food ingredients are flammable, their dust can explode if in high concentration, sugar and grain, grain silos explode all the time from the dust.  could have been a combo thing, gas leak and dust- kaBOOOM

as Dave and OP said tho, was there a safety system in place, like a smoke alarm and what happened?

[Tom Feinsteen]

Sugar and cocoa powder are stupidly flammable …. I think, dont hold me to it

Geez gotta be careful next time I walk into a candy store, I think See’s Candies like all others are safe though, you never hear of any of them exploding?

[Da Zazz]

Now we know that the C in C4 stands for chocolate.

[Lennie Deakens]

there was a mole on the factory floor, from Hershey’s Chocolates.  no no no better yet it was a former supervisor brought in from Nestle.

[Pat McScott]

Oompa Loompas have been frustrated by the lack of good faith negotiation from management for years. Looks like things finally boiled over 🙁

[Anonymous]

It was friday’s and hooters time to unwind but instead workers labored the late night shift and right after … they had a blast

[Brandon Weiss]

@aguilar  fugitive emissions from new mexico field hands, and the main “check” valve wasnt welded to gas company’s specs

[Gerald Fuller]

Gas leak probably. A lot of the factories round here are old as shit. Natural gas leaked into the poorly vented facility and ignited.

[Darrin Rodriguez]

WFMZ-TV, the local news reported “The impact of the explosion was so forceful that it moved the building, which also houses a church and apartments, 4 feet forward. ”

for a gas incident to happen, the facility floor would have to be flooded with high concentration of gas for it to ignite in an open space, the employees would have suffocated on gas before the concentation of gas in the air is sufficent for ignition.

as for an explosion of this magnitude? wow, you would need “the perfect storm” for some kind of heavy gas line to be exposed and to contain sufficent combustible under HIGH PRESSURE to react in this manner.  Just gas in open air igniting from a spark does not cause a massive explosion, it just causes a momentary fireball that dissipates and burns off the gas in a nice flame out.  Explosion requires both ignition and massive quantity of stored gas (or flammables) under pressure to heat up and burst.  People connect the two from fiction in television but in real life it does not happen the way you see it on tv shows.

[Dave2000]

outstanding insights Darrin 🥇

[Jeff Marvel]

what OP meant to say, they needed “explosive” advertising and what better way to hit the national air waves than with a big bang?  the silver lining, they clear out a facility that was extra capacity, a drag on the overhead and needed scraping, and turn it into a cashout situation after the insurance policy payment clears, cause    it    was   an     “accident”

[Carl Rafferty]

Serious question: How does a chocolate factory blow up in this way? I mean, is it something with pressure system that can lead to such detonations? I’d expect such a detonation from an arms- and explosives-factory or other rather dangerous things, but chocolate?

I was in Switzerland years ago and now come to think of it, we never hear of any chocolate factories exploding in Switzerland even though they are THE land of chocolate.  I am at a loss in understanding this.

[Author]

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