WEST READING, Pa. — People are still coming out to see what remains of R.M. Palmer Company in West Reading after an explosion late Friday evening left behind nothing but rubble.
"Those poor people that passed away. They went to work, they got up that day, not knowing what was going to happen, and they are not coming home," said Aida Acevedo, Reading.
Aida Acevedo says when she heard about the explosion, she immediately called her sister, who lives just two blocks away, "Her and her neighbors were outside on the porches because there was a big rattle through the windows, the walls rattled, when they looked up into the sky all they could see was this black smoke."
Aida and her husband, George Acevedo, came to the site to pray, where state police say seven people lost their lives.
"One of my friend's father was in there that they found dead. We work together, me and my friend. And his father, he found out, was one of the last ones they found," said George Acevedo, Reading.
George Acevedo says now is the time for surrounding communities to come together, "I think that they're going to need a lot of help and a lot of prayers. Because that was something that never really happened here before. We never had that kind of news here. And for a factory like that to just blow up that something that happened here that should've never really even happened".
State police are still investigating the cause of the deadly explosion in West Reading.
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