Abington Township officials announced this morning during a press conference that the shelter-in-place and voluntary evacuations will be lifted at 11:00am.
Air quality in the radius surrounding SPS Technologies is no longer unsafe due to continuous monitoring showing no detectable chemical threat, officials said. Residents can return to their homes and businesses closed since the fire on Monday night can reopen.
The Glenside, Jenkintown, and Noble SEPTA regional rail stations are now open as well, officials said.
On Tuesday, the township declared a Disaster Emergency due to the magnitude of the incident. Abington Township’s website is serving as the official source of public information.
Smoke is still rising and fire debris is coated in a layer of ice from nonstop spraying.
“When you look at the size of this building, some 500 thousand square feet and multilayers the difficulty to access our firefighters out in that weather and with equipment, it’s very difficult for them to completely extinguish this fire,” said Patrick Molloy, Chief of Abington Township Police.
The cause of the fire is still under investigation. The factory’s sprinkler system was out of service because of a maintenance issue, though officials credited SPS Technologies with following the right precautions by having a fire watch in place and keeping a fire brigade in the building, allowing 60 workers to evacuate without injury.
Tom McAneney, Abington’s director of fire and emergency management services, told The Philadelphia Inquirer he was not aware of any “major” fires at SPS over the last 25 years.
“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.
He added there has been no evidence of toxic chemicals in the air or water as a result of the fire.
Glenn Meyers, who worked for 37 years as a machine operator at SPS, told The Inquirer that he could remember witnessing “six or seven fires”, and that they happened often enough for the facility to have had its own fire truck at one time.
You can watch 6ABC’s video coverage below:
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Photos: Rockledge Fire Company