Workers at a Pennsylvania chocolate factory smelled “rotten eggs" before a powerful natural gas explosion that leveled one building, heavily damaged another and killed seven people, federal safety officials said Tuesday in a preliminary report.
The National Transportation Safety Board's five-paragraph account of the fatal explosion confirmed earlier reporting by The Associated Press and other media outlets that employees had detected an odor of natural gas at the R.M. Palmer Co. factory in West Reading, a small town 60 miles (96 kilometers) northwest of Philadelphia.
