ST. LOUIS _ Three people were killed and four others were injured after an explosion at a box company in St. Louis sent a large boiler flying into the air and through the roof of a nearby building.
The explosion happened about 7:30 a.m. local time at the Loy-Lange Box Co., where one person was killed, according to St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson. The boiler was launched about 500 feet and crashed into an office area in the Faultless Healthcare Linen building, where it crushed several people. Two were killed, and a third person was pinned underneath the van-sized piece of equipment.
The department's Collapse Rescue Task Force was able to free that victim from under the boiler, a cast iron cylinder about 8 to 9 feet long and 3.5 to 4 feet in diameter. It weighed about a ton and a half, Jenkerson said.
Jenkerson said the boiler was still hot when he arrived about 15 minutes after the initial call.
Four injured people were taken to hospitals for treatment. At least two were in critical condition, Jenkerson said. There were no details on the dead or injured.
A third building was damaged when a piece of pipe about 18 feet long pierced the roof of the Pioneer Industrial Corp. building. The pipe knocked out the building's sprinkler system, but no one was injured there, Jenkerson said.
"This was a very hectic scene with three buildings involved," Jenkerson said. "We've got to shut down gas, electric and water and still maintain the manpower to make sure everyone is accounted for."
Sixty-five firefighters were on the scene within 15 minutes, Jenkerson said.
The scene is in the Kosciusko neighborhood, a mostly industrial area just to the east of the Soulard neighborhood, where the explosion occurred. Several streets were blocked off in the area.
Jenkerson said he believes the explosion was accidental. Investigators will be reviewing records to see whether the machine had been properly maintained. He said he wasn't sure whether anyone was working on the boiler at the time of the explosion.
Investigators are looking for any surveillance cameras in the area that might have captured the explosion.
Workers of Faultless gathered on a parking lot a block away to console one another. One man, who asked that his name be withheld because he feared he would lose his job, said he was opening bags of soiled hospital linens to be sorted when it happened.
"I heard a big old boom," he said. "It shook the building, then there was silence."
Some people thought a truck hit the building.
"Everybody was afraid," the man said. "They yelled, 'Get out, don't take anything with you. Just get out."
He said they ran outside, then spent the next few hours hearing updates here and there from co-workers but nothing from management.
He said two of the office workers in the part of the building struck by the boiler had just started with the company; the third was a secretary, he said.
"Everybody was crying because they've never experienced it," he said. "That boom is in my mind. It's a thing you don't forget."
Inside the plant, he said, a wall and maybe 10 feet separated him from the administration offices where the boiler landed.
Owners of the Kansas City-based medical linen company are heading to St. Louis to be with employees and survey the damage, according to a company representative. The company opened in St. Louis in 2006, according to its website. The company was not ready to release any details about the dead and injured.
"We are grateful to the firefighters and other emergency responders who have acted heroically in response to this tragic event," Mark Spence, chief operating officer of Faultless, said in a statement.
Loy-Lange Box Co. specializes in corrugated products, including point-of-purchase packaging and shipping containers. A plant manager at the scene declined to comment, and other representatives of the company could not immediately be reached. The company was founded in 1897, according to its website.
"I open the door and we seen dust flying," said. Rocky Pruneau. "Stuff flying everywhere is all we saw."
He said a pipe or pole flew from the Loy-Lange Box Co. building across a parking lot and went through the windshield of his pickup. The pipe was sticking straight out of his windshield.
