On Friday night, a motorcade guided family, R.M. Palmer employees and community members to the West Reading Fire Department for a vigil following last week's explosion.
A woman pulled alive from the rubble says her arm caught fire as flames engulfed the building - and then she fell through the floor into a vat of liquid chocolate.
The dark liquid extinguished her blazing arm, but Patricia Borges wound up breaking her collarbone and both of her heels. She would spend the next nine hours screaming for help and waiting for rescue as firefighters battled the inferno and choppers thumped overhead at the R.M. Palmer Co. factory. "When I began to burn, I thought it was the end for me," Borges, 50, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview from her hospital bed in West Reading, just minutes from the chocolate factory where she worked as a machine operator. Investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board planned to interview Borges on Friday.
Borges said she and others had complained about a gas odor about 30 minutes before the factory blew up. She is angry Palmer didn't immediately evacuate. She said the deaths of her co-workers - including her close friend, Judith Lopez-Moran - could've been prevented. Others workers have also said they smelled natural gas, according to their relatives. Palmer, a 75-year-old, family-run company with deep roots in the small town 60 miles northwest of Philadelphia, has not responded to questions about the workers' claims.Related Topics
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