A woman pulled alive from the rubble of a Pennsylvania chocolate factory after an explosion that killed seven co-workers says her arm caught fire as flames engulfed the building - and then she fell through the floor into a vat of liquid chocolate.
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.
At 4:30 p.m., Borges told the AP, she smelled natural gas. It was strong and nauseated her. Borges and her co-workers approached their supervisor, asking "what was going to be done, if we were going to be evacuated," she recalled. She began to run. That's when the floor gave way, and she could feel herself falling - into a long, horizontal tank of chocolate in the factory's basement. At 4 feet, 10 inches tall, Borges landed on her feet in chest-high liquid.The vat began filling with water from firefighters' hoses, eventually forcing Borges to climb out as it reached neck level. She sat on the lip of the tank, then jumped into a pool of water that had formed on the basement floor.
"I think had they not gotten to her when they did, there was a very good chance the number of victims was going to be plus one," said Pagurek, also a captain in the Philadelphia Fire Department.Her rescue gave hope to first responders who already had pulled two bodies from the rubble in the hours after the blast. Rescuers spent two more days at the pile. They found five more bodies but no additional survivors.
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