Although authorities are continuing to investigate the cause of the devastating fire that gutted a 70,000 square foot inventory building at New Pig Corp. in Tipton on Halloween night, plans are continuing as the company moves forward in anticipation of a new and larger building on the site.
“We’re shooting for six months,” said Scott Diminick, plant manager at New Pig. “Everything looks good for an August opening, but we’re still early in the plans.”
According to Diminick, the Antis Township Supervisors on Thursday gave tentative approval for a land development plan for New Pig to build a new, and larger building at the Ardie J. Dillen Industrial Park. The approval was tentative contingent on the township receiving a joint permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers.
“That permit should be completed (today),” said Diminick. “Once the supervisors receive it, there shouldn’t be a problem with them accepting it. Once that happens, we can move forward with plans to get this new building up.”
Diminick said Ralph J. Albarano & Sons Inc. of Duncansville has been contracted to construct the building. The contractor has completed a number of projects in the area, including numerous buildings in the industrial park and the Blair County Ballpark.
“This group is A-rate,” said Diminick. “We’re lucky to have them doing the work for us.”
Diminick said the contractor should mobilize to the site this week; however, he doesn’t expect any digging to begin right away.
“Again, we’re hoping to open the new building in August, but of course, everything is weather permitting,” he said.
Plans call for a building more than twice the size of the previous building. Diminick said it will be about 122,500 square feet. That’s a full 62,500 square feet larger than the one that burnt in October.
“It’s going to be a high-storage warehouse,” said Diminick. “We used the old building for a bunch of different things, but this one will be 100 percent storage and that’s it.”
The fire broke out in Building Two at the containment absorbent manufacturing site at approximately 10 p.m. on Oct. 31. When the smoke cleared early the next morning, the entire contents of the building – which included the company’s entire inventory, customer service area, sales area, technical services area, distribution, building and grounds and cafeteria – was amongst a pile of mangled metal and smoldering debris.
During the last week of December, Blair County Judge Daniel Milliron dictated an order which allowed several companies, all who New Pig claim could be held liable for the fire, to examine and photograph the site. These companies wanted to ensure the area was prepared correctly for when inspectors arrived to try and determine what caused the multi-million dollar fire.
The court arguments began when Phillips Electronics North America Corp. asked Milliron for an injunction, barring New Pig from initiating demolition exercises at the site. The demolition, which was originally to begin Dec. 23, was halted until Phillips and New Pig could provide the court with proposed work schedules so the company would not lose revenue in the time in between.
Phillips claimed that if demolition would have begun that day, there would be no way the company could gather their own investigators and get them to the site in time. Phillips wanted representatives there to document the demolition and come to their own conclusions concerning the origin of the fire.
New Pig has claimed that a light, produced by Phillips, may have exploded and caused the blaze.
“All we can really say is the investigation is still continuing,” said New Pig’s insurance company’s attorney Maureen Zemel from her Pittsburgh office this morning. “We don’t have any information because there won’t be a determination of what caused the fire until they take the materials from the scene and look at them in the laboratory.”
Zemel said the investigation is “an extensive process” and that it’s “going to take some time.”
According to Connie Penn, legal liaison with New Pig, companies continue to sift through the rubble.
“There are still people going through the building, but we’re allowing them to do what they have to in particular areas,” she said. “But what they are doing now is not in the way of us moving forward in the construction of the new facility.”
