Factory

A fire that broke out early Thursday morning at the Dali-Fresh Inc. factory on Main Street in Tullytown may have caused more than $250,000 in building damage, according to an insurance adjuster. The two-alarm fire at the wholesale snack foods factory was reported at 6:40 a.m. by an employee at the nearby Meenan Oil Co. and was under control shortly after 8 a.m., according to Tullytown Fire Chief Dick Johnson. "I could see the smoke from a mile away as I drove in," said Edward "Butch" Bomentry, assistant chief of the Edgeley Fire Co., who was the first firefighter on the scene.

In the rush to resettle corporate headquarters in glamorous downtown office towers or sleek country campuses, Fischer & Porter Co. has held its ground. Three years ago, the Bucks County company, which manufactures industrial flow-measurement equipment, wanted to upgrade its image and considered moving to a tony new development. That was until top managers learned that the move would cost about $22 million. Instead, the company turned to its rundown factory complex on 40 acres in Warminster and, for less than half the price of a move, transformed it into a glossy world headquarters with a glass-atrium lobby.

Donald Klumpp and Kristin Laczkawski are neighbors. They share a block in Port Richmond, where Klumpp is vice president of the Aldan Rubber Co. and Kristin is a fourth grader at St. George's Parish School. The factory and the school have shared the block for nearly 70 years. In that time, Aldan has turned out a lot of rubberized fabric for life rafts and St. George's has graduated about 1,500 students. But times have changed and a heated debate is taking place over whether the school and the factory can operate side by side.

Police arrested a 13-year-old boy earlier this week in the investigation into the Quaker Lace Co. arson that destroyed the old North Philadelphia factory and half of a city block. The arrest of the youth, whose name was not released by police, was the third so far. The boy, who lives on Russell Street near 7th, was charged with arson, criminal mischief, possession of an incendiary device, recklessly endangering another person, aggravated assault and simple assault. Sources said the boy originally told police he was in the factory to act as a lookout and did not actually help set the fire.

DHAKA, Bangladesh - Fire raced through a garment factory that supplies major retailers in the West, killing at least 112 people, many of whom were trapped by the flames because the eight-story building lacked emergency exits, an official said Sunday. The blaze broke out late Saturday at a factory operated just outside Bangladesh's capital of Dhaka by Tazreen Fashions Ltd., a subsidiary of the Tuba Group, which makes products for Wal-Mart and other companies in the United States and Europe.

It was just after 3 in the morning on June 20, 2007, when a mammoth orange glow lit up several blocks of rickety Kensington rowhouses. The first residents to realize that the abandoned factory at H Street and Westmoreland was ablaze scurried in nightclothes down their steps, thumping their fists against plaster walls, bellowing, "Fire! Fire!" to stir their neighbors. The flames in the city-owned building leaped so high and wide that Ivette Olivera woke up from the sweltering heat that turned her bedroom into an oven.

For eight years, the former Transit America factory in Somerton has been shuttered, awaiting a tenant or owner who would have some use for the 194-acre facility. That's not to say the plant doesn't have plenty of occupants these days - the four-legged kind. About 70 deer make their home on the old factory grounds, according to Jerry Schnee, the plant controller who supervises a skeleton plant maintenance staff of 21. They've become a sort of informal zoo. The sight of the deer has become a regular attraction for neighbors and motorists passing by the plant on Red Lion Road, at the city's border with Montgomery County.

Morris Sheintoch, a Russian immigrant who developed a modest garment factory into a national supplier of children's apparel, died Saturday at Lankenau Hospital. He was 85 and lived in Bala Cynwyd. Mr. Sheintoch was founder and chairman of the Good Lad Co., at 431 E. Tioga St. in Kensington, which ships children's clothing to such major department stores as Bloomingdale's, Marshall Field and Jordan Marsh, as well as boutiques across the country. The firm is the largest manufacturer of children's apparel in the city, according to Mr. Sheintoch's son, Peter, president and chief executive officer since 1975.

The irrepressible spread of casual dress at work from Fridays to every day of the week is forcing Pincus Bros. Inc., Philadelphia's last major men's clothing-maker, to close its factory at Fifth and Race Streets. Fewer and fewer businessmen are wearing suits to work these days, according to Alvin Dorsky, an attorney for Pincus. "There is simply not enough work to keep the factory going. " A union official broke the news to the 367 workers yesterday. The layoffs will affect 273 at the Center City plant and 94 at a cutting facility in East Falls.

The aging brick factory near the borough's Main Street - the one with the decaying roof that has been closed since 1990 - was a place of possibility when J. Bruce Tobin began working there in 1961. Known as Union Camp, it employed more than 200 people and shipped out tons of multilayered paper bags nationwide each year. Since its closing 10 years ago, the paper-bag factory has evolved from a manufacturing powerhouse into a vestige of the area's industrial history, a testimony to a changing local labor market that could not attract enough people to work at its mills.