ST. LOUIS _ Three new hires at a south St. Louis linen laundering company were filling out paperwork in the office Monday morning when a boiler launched by an explosion at a nearby box factory crashed through the roof, killing two of them and critically injuring the third.
The initial explosion about 7:30 a.m. killed one person at Loy-Lange Box Co. and shot the boiler into the air. It flew about 500 feet before crashing into the offices at Faultless Healthcare Linen, where the two new hires were hit.
"You just can't believe the size of this tank that landed in the office," said Mark Spence, the chief operating officer of Faultless who confirmed it was two new employees who were killed. "It's just enormous. It's emotionally overwhelming just to think what these poor people experienced."
A total of three people were killed and four injured at the two structures. At least two of the injured were in critical condition. One of them was trapped in the Faultless office underneath the boiler, a metal cylinder at least 10 to 12 feet long and 3 to 3.5 feet in diameter, according to St. Louis Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson. It weighed a ton or more, the chief said.
The St. Louis Fire Department's Collapse Rescue Task Force was able to free that victim from under the boiler, Jenkerson said. The boiler was still hot when he arrived 15 minutes after the initial call.
Police on Monday evening identified one of those killed as Kenneth Trentham, 59.
City records show that Trentham had been one of the licensed engineers at Loy-Lange, said Maggie Crane, a spokeswoman for St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay.
There were no other details released on the others killed or injured.
A third building was damaged when a piece of pipe about 8 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. The blast also threw a pipe so far that it lodged in the windshield of a truck at a business across the street from Loy-Lange.
"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 there within 15 minutes, Jenkerson said.
The scene is in the Kosciusko neighborhood, a mostly industrial area just to the east of Soulard. 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. The company had two boilers, according to city records, both dating to the 1960s.
Investigators are looking for any surveillance cameras in the area that might have captured the explosion.
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration also sent a team to investigate the cause.
The Missouri Division of Fire Safety requires state inspections of boilers every year or two, depending on the type of boiler _ but not in the city of St. Louis.
The city does not inspect boilers but instead requires that every company with a boiler have a licensed engineer on duty whenever a boiler is in operation. The city issues those licenses through the mechanical section of the city's building division, said Crane, the mayor's spokeswoman. The engineers are required to take courses at a trade school and pass a test.
In addition to Trentham, Loy-Lange had two other engineers on staff with up-to-date licenses. Trentham's license had been first issued in 1996 and then renewed annually, Crane said.
Spence, the Faultless executive, said the Kansas City, Mo.-based medical linen company employs about 560 people, with more than 100 of them at the south St. Louis facility. The company has counselors available for employees immediately and will for the long term.
"Being a family-owned business, we're very close-knit and we want to do whatever we can to help," Spence said.
The facility's production area remains intact and functional, Spence said. But the company is diverting some of its work to other facilities in Kansas City and north St. Louis, where employees will be working double shifts, he said.
After the blast, Faultless employees 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 from co-workers but nothing from management.
"That boom is in my mind," the man said. "It's a thing you don't forget."
Inside the plant, he said, a wall and about 10 feet separated him from the administration offices where the boiler landed.
An employee at nearby Kranz Truck Body, across the street from Loy-Lange Box Co., said he was working when he heard the explosion.
"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.
