GREENVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — The Dicastal North America auto parts plant in Greenville that exploded last week has a history of fires and OSHA violations at the site.
The explosion could be heard for miles around 9:45 Friday night.
Pete Rittersdorf lives down the street and says the explosion shook his entire home.
“Shook the whole house for probably … three seconds and we figure out what the heck was going on and my son was looking out the east window and he said he saw a big ball of flame, fire, and I figured right then it was probably an explosion from there, Dicastal,” Rittersdorf said.
A surveillance camera from a home captured the flash of light made from the explosion.
One employee was taken by ambulance to a hospital with burn injuries.
The Greenville Daily News reports this was the fourth fire call at the plant this year. They had a dust explosion in January, a roof fire in February and smoke in the plant a week before the explosion.
Joseph Abbott was home from deployment in the Army when the explosion occurred.
“We walk outside and we see the smoke coming off of the building and we even seen some flames like coming out of like the top part of the back of the building,” Abbott said.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration website lists eight violations at the Dicastal plant in Greenville. After working with the regulator, they were fined nearly $27,000.
The FBI executed a search warrant at the plant in July. The agency told News 8 it had no additional information to release Monday.
Neighbors say they want to make sure employees working at the plant are safe and it does not happen again.
“I’m surprised that more injuries hadn’t occurred due to that explosion,” Abbott said.