Monday, January 12, 2015

BODY OF WORKER FOUND AFTER BRISTOL TOWNSHIP, PA CEMENT SILO COLLAPSE. CAUSE OF DEADLY SILO COLLAPSE MAY NOT BE KNOWN UNTIL SUMMER



BODY OF WORKER FOUND AFTER BRISTOL TOWNSHIP, PA CEMENT SILO COLLAPSE.  CAUSE OF DEADLY SILO COLLAPSE MAY NOT BE KNOWN UNTIL SUMMER












Posted: Sunday, January 11, 2015 10:00 pm | Updated: 8:20 pm, Mon Jan 12, 2015.



By Anthony DiMattia Staff Writer 




After a four-day search, the body of a missing 49-year-old worker was discovered Sunday after a giant silo collapsed and engulfed him last week in Bristol Township, according to Bristol Township acting police Chief Ralph Johnson.




The body of Anthony Gabriele was found around 2 p.m. Sunday by firefighters who used their hands to dig through tons of concrete powder after the 100-foot silo Gabriele was working in gave way in the early morning hours of Jan. 8 at Riverside Cement, a materials warehouse at 7900 Radcliffe St. Edgely Fire Co. Chief Carl Pierce said.







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CAUSE OF DEADLY SILO COLLAPSE MAY NOT BE KNOWN UNTIL SUMMER







Firefighter Chris Straka / Fairless Hills Fire Department



Firefighters work to recovery the body of a man killed when a concrete silo collapsed in Bristol Twp., Pa, Thursday, January 9, 2015. Photo by Firefighter Chris Straka / Fairless Hills Fire Department.




Posted: Monday, January 12, 2015 9:15 pm | Updated: 10:30 pm, Mon Jan 12, 2015.



By Jo Ciavaglia Staff writer



What caused the collapse of a 125-foot silo containing concrete mix powder at a Bristol Township materials warehouse may not be known until early summer, according the federal agency leading the probe.




By law, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has up to six months to conduct its investigation and release the findings, said Leni Uddyback-Fortson, regional director of the U.S. Department of Labor office of public affairs. The office does not comment on open investigations, she added.




OSHA workers have been at Riverside Industrial Complex in the 7900 block of North Radcliffe Street since the Thursday silo collapse that killed Anthony “Tony” Gabriele, 49, of Bristol Township, a company supervisor. His body was found Sunday after a four-day search involving hundreds of fire responders.



Gabriele was found near an outside office trailer next to the collapsed silo. An autopsy Monday found that he died of multiple injuries as a result of being buried under structural debris, Bucks County coroner Dr. Joseph Campbell said.



Roughly 100 man-hours were spent between Edgely and 15 other local fire companies from lower and upper Bucks County, technical rescue teams, local police departments, contractors and other community members to find Gabriele.




Firefighters working in shifts sifted through several thousand tons of cement and used heavy equipment to remove steel beams of the collapsed tangled steel silo building.



As of Monday, it was unclear what role — if any — Bristol Township’s building and planning department would play in the investigation into the cause of the collapse of the structure, which was built in the 1980s, Bristol Township manager William McCauley said. He believed that OSHA and the Pennsylvania Department of Labor would lead the investigation.



“I will be discussing the matter with the director of building and planning and the township solicitor to review,” McCauley added, “but think the state and federal government agencies are better equipped to investigate this matter.”



A Bristol Township police officer on routine patrol discovered the collapse around 1 a.m. Thursday, Godzieba said. Gabriele was among the employees who worked until 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday. He was the only one unaccounted for after the collapse.




The silo that collapsed was the middle of three on the property, which are part of the Silvi Group Companies that have concrete and cement businesses in Bucks and Chester counties as well as New Jersey. Silvi also owns the Riverside Industrial Complex, where the Riverside Cement warehouse is located.




Last week an OSHA spokeswoman in Philadelphia confirmed there were three prior inspections at Riverside Cement; two inspections were initiated in 2004 and the result was in-compliance inspections.



The agency also conducted an inspection of the property in 2012 as a result of a complaint alleging fall hazards and limited means of egress from a vessel, spokeswoman Lenore Uddyback-Forson said. As a result, the company was cited for misusing an aerial lift as a crane to offload materials from the shipping docks, but the fall hazard complaints were unfounded.




The death was the third in two years involving a worker at a Bucks County company.



Last January, a 51-year-old Mount Laurel, New Jersey, man was killed when a rock salt mountain collapsed on the backhoe he was operating at the seaport near the GROWS landfill. Gustav Propper was an independent contractor working for International Salt, which rents dock space at the port.




In February 2013, a 50-year-old northern New Jersey man was buried alive in sugar at a Fairless Hills processing plant, an accident that a subsequent investigation suggested could have been prevented.




The joint Univision and ProPublic investigation found that a manager ordered a safety device removed because it was believed to slow production, and it was common practice for employees at the CSC Sugar plant to climb on top of the sugar inside hoppers since the Roebling Road warehouse opened in 2012; The report cited hundreds of OSHA documents in the Feb. 25, 2013, death of Janio Salinas-Valerda, who died of asphyxiation.



OSHA fined CSC, which refines and distributes sugar to food manufacturers, $25,855 after the accident. But after the plant installed a safety guard and started using a new procedure to break up sugar clumps the agency reduced the fine to $18,098, according to the investigation.