WEST READING, Pa. — At least two people were killed and five people remain missing after an explosion at a chocolate factory in West Reading on Friday afternoon sent a column of black smoke into the sky and blew out the windows of nearby homes, leaving some families in the small, tight-knit town still awaiting word on the fate of their relatives nearly 24 hours later.
On Saturday afternoon, Frankie Gonzalez stood atop a hill overlooking the site where his sister Diana Cedeno, 45, worked in packaging for more than a year. She has not yet been accounted for.
A cousin alerted Gonzalez to the explosion on Friday afternoon; he hasn’t slept since. As he waited for updates about his sister, whom he described as the family matriarch, Gonzalez fiddled with a pair of binoculars he bought to help see if Cedeno is carried out of the rubble.
