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.
//__________________________________________//
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.
