Update: Evacuations Lifted near Abington Township, PA, Aerospace Supply Facility
The Philadelphia Inquirer
(TNS)
PHILADELPHIA — First, there were reports of explosions Monday night at the SPS Technologies factory in Abington.
Then, a four-alarm fire and plumes of smoke that drifted across the neighborhood well into Tuesday morning, triggering a shelter-in-place order for everyone within a one-mile radius.
On Tuesday afternoon, residents living near the industrial complex received an urgent message from their local government officials: Get out if you can. Now.
“Due to changing conditions and concerns of air quality,” read the 2:15 p.m. evacuation notice, “the Abington Township Emergency Operations Center and Jenkintown Emergency Management are advising all residents and businesses in the locations below to voluntarily evacuate within the hour while conditions permit.”
The evacuation zone covered about 250 homes, mostly in Jenkintown. Officials set up a shelter in the auditorium of Cheltenham High School.
The potential health risks from Monday night’s fire at the aerospace parts supplier increased throughout the day — even though the blaze had initially been under control. At an afternoon news conference, a township official said the company’s sprinkler system was “out of service” for maintenance, but the site had taken precautions to operate while it was down.
When Jamila Winder, vice chair of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners, took the podium Tuesday morning in Blue Bell for the annual state of the county address, she first had to confront the disaster unfolding about 10 miles away.
Firefighters from 68 fire companies had responded to SPS Technologies following the explosion around 9:30 p.m. Monday. No injuries were immediately reported, but school districts in Abington, Jenkintown and Cheltenham were closed Tuesday and would remain so Wednesday; SEPTA Regional Rail lines were suspended; and residents were told to shelter in place due to concerns about air quality and water contamination.
“It was a long night for our first responders,” Winder said, “but things are looking a lot better this morning.”
But before Winder finished her speech, things got worse.
Thick, gray smoke was again billowing out of the factory by 10:30 a.m. Tuesday. Sirens blared and streams of water arched over the top of the structure as firefighters battled the resurgent blaze amid 30 mph wind gusts and below-zero wind chills.
“We are aware of increased activity at the site. The site is an active fire and an investigation is underway,” Ashley McIlvaine, assistant township manager in Abington, said around 11 a.m. Tuesday. “We are not aware of what is on fire at this time.”
The fire could be seen across the region — including from Center City office buildings — as smoke drifted through the area. The cause of the fire was still under investigation.
“There was a flare-up,” Abington Township Police Chief Patrick Molloy explained at an afternoon news conference. “When you look at the size of this building, some 500,000 square feet and multi layers … it’s very difficult for them to completely extinguish this fire.”
Representatives for SPS did not respond to requests for comment.
SPS, located on Highland Avenue, uses chemicals to manufacture parts for the aerospace and aviation industries. Fire officials were initially concerned that those chemicals could form arsenic if mixed, said Abington Fire Chief Mike Jones.
Lindsay Weicher and her husband had just put their 3-year-old son to bed Monday night when they heard a loud bang outside their home.
“We didn’t think anything of it. It sounded like maybe a door had slammed,” said Weicher, 39, who has lived across the street from SPS Technologies since 2019.
Then she heard the sirens. When she opened her door to investigate, bright orange flames soared from the factory.
“It was kind of a surreal experience,” Weicher said.
Founded in Philadelphia in 1903 as Standard Pressed Steel Co., SPS was famous for the armor-piercing bullet cores and other WWII military supplies it manufactured.
Now owned by a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, SPS is well-known to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The company generated and disposed of 177 tons of chemicals in 2023, according to the EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory. That included a classification of chemicals known as “ignitable waste,” which includes paint and ink.
Environmental regulators have found issues at the site as far back as the 1980s, and most recently, in 2023, SPS Technologies reached an agreement with the EPA to pay $109,000 for storing chemicals without a permit.
As smoke rose from the factory Tuesday morning, Mary Harmon watched in awe from her front porch.
“It breaks my heart that this keeps happening,” she said.
Harmon, 81, said this was not the first fire she had witnessed at the company’s complex, which sits adjacent to her home across a large, grassy playing field. The last one she recalls was two years ago, but it was much smaller, and firefighters extinguished it swiftly.
There are two soccer nets and a baseball diamond on the field between Harmon’s home and the factory, and Harmon worries that Little League players and other children who congregate there could be exposed to toxins from the blaze.
Hallowell Park, directly across from SPS, is part of the Abington Parks and Recreation Department, with athletic fields for youth sports. There is also a dog park. The SPS parking lot is where some neighborhood teenagers learned to drive.
By 11:45 a.m. Tuesday, the skies over SPS Technologies were clear once more, after firefighters again contained the blaze.
Fire department response data collected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency show that between 2022 and 2023, local fire departments responded to at least four reports of fire at the SPS complex.
Tom McAneney, Abington’s director of fire and emergency management services, said he was not aware of any “major” fires at SPS over the last 25 years. He said that the sprinkler system was “out of service” at the time of the fire due to a maintenance issue, but that the company “followed all precautions that are required under the law.”
“They had a fire watch in place, and … they have a fire brigade on site … [which] allows them to be able to continue to operate even when the sprinkler system was out of service,” McAneney said.
Glenn Meyers, who worked for 37 years as a machine operator at SPS, said that he could remember witnessing “six or seven fires” during his time there, and that they happened often enough for the facility to have had its own fire truck at one time.
Once, a coworker caused a small explosion by placing titanium into a wood chipper. Another time, Meyers recalled, a fire broke out on the factory floor.
”They got put out fast enough,” Meyers said. “It kind of felt like it came with the job.”
SPS had been without working sprinklers for about two months, according to a current employee who has knowledge of the facility. He declined to be identified out of fear of reprisal.
”Was I surprised to hear that [the place] was on fire? Yes,” the employee told The Inquirer over the phone. “Was I surprised to hear how bad it got? No.”
The SPS employee said he had not heard anything from the company besides a text from his supervisor that told him not to come in that morning.
Weicher said her family was abiding by the shelter-in-place order and wearing N95 masks.
So far, “the air doesn’t smell or taste much different from normal. It’s not smoky,” she said. “But with all those chemicals that could be in there, maybe there’s something in the air that we can’t notice. … Is the air outside going to be a problem from now on?”
McAneney said there has been no evidence of toxic chemicals in the air or water as a result of Monday’s fire.
In addition to environmental violations, SPS has been fined by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in recent years over dangerous industrial accidents: lacerated fingers; a crushed arm; an amputated thumb.
Still, Harmon said she believes SPS Technologies is a “great company” with some unfortunate incidents.
“This company sponsors the best Fourth of July fireworks you’ve ever seen,” Harmon said. “I think in many ways, they’re just not real careful.”
( Philadelphia Inquirer staff writers Katie Bernard, Frank Kummer, Robert Moran, Rodrigo Torrejón, Joseph N. DiStefano and Ximena Conde and graphics editor John Duchneskie contributed to this article.)
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