By Ashley McCarty
The awning of the Killen Generating Station in Manchester, Ohio, collapsed on workers Wednesday who were at the abandoned plant for demolition preparations.
The five men involved were from Adamo Demolition Co. of Detroit, Mi, and were hired in 2019 by Kingfisher Development LLC, a subsidiary of St. Louis-based Commercial Liability Partners, LLC.
The 911 call was made at 8:36 a.m. on Wednesday by a worker located in another building.
Of the five workers originally unaccounted for, two men were recovered and transported to Meadowview Regional Medical Center in Maysville, Kentucky, earlier in the day, and listed in stable condition. As of 2 p.m., a worker who had been trapped under debris but communicative, was rescued was airlifted to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center with apparently more serious injuries, though he reportedly gave the rescue workers a “thumbs up” as he was carted away from the facility.
As of late Wednesday, the rescue mission for the two remaining individuals, Jamie Fitzgerald of Boyd County, West Virginia, and Doug Gray of Greenup County, Kentucky, was considered a recovery effort.
“[The families] can rest assured that the [crews] down there looking for them will not leave until they’re found,” said Adams County Sheriff Kimmy Rogers.
Adamo Demolition Co. was the same company in charge of demolishing the Muskingum River Plant near Beverly, Ohio. That’s where, in December 2015, the company’s CEO, John T. Adamo, Jr., was struck and killed by a steel cable that broke loose from a conveyor bridge used to haul coal into the plant, according to Occupational Safety and Health Administration records.
OSHA cited the company with four serious violations in the summer of 2016, and Adamo’s widow later filed a wrongful death suit against the company. That case was settled out of court last year, and the company paid $28,000 in penalties as a result of the OSHA citations.
The Killen Generating Station, as well as the J.M Stuart Station, were permanently closed in 2018. The Killen Generating Station had been in operation since 1982.
Plans to demolish the two retired coal facilities had been announced earlier in the year by Commercial Liability Partners, LLC. At the time of the announcement, Ron Froh, CEO and president of CLP had been optimistic of the demolition process.
“I cannot even imagine what the families are going through, knowing their loved ones are trapped inside,” Sheriff Rogers told media outlets. “The search will be nonstop until they find the missing, whether it’s one day or two days, or a week. We will be here until they find these people.”
The building that collpased was scheduled for demolition on Monday, Dec. 14.
(The above informatiuon is what was available to the Defender at Thursday deadline.)