Industrial Park

A huge explosion rocked an industrial park outside Allentown last night, trapping at least six people in the wreckage and blanketing the area under a noxious chemical cloud. Emergency personnel worked into the early hours of the morning to reach the people feared trapped inside the flattened building on Roble Road in the Lehigh Valley Industrial Park, Hanover Township. The site is less than a mile from Lehigh Valley International Airport. Workers were trying to move huge concrete pieces of wall, which were hampering rescue efforts.

It has been three years since four boys sledding on Irish Hill, a wooded area tucked close to an industrial park in Runnemede, found Patricia Parkin's body in the snow. "They thought it was a mannequin because it was so solid and frozen," said Runnemede Police Lt. Mark Diano, who has been following leads in Parkin's slaying since that day - Dec. 27, 1995. When she was discovered, beaten to death, Parkin had been missing for nearly a month. The last time she was seen, she was leaving Bruno's Bar in Glendora with a man. In October, authorities made significant advances in the case, and they are homing in on a suspect who lives in Gloucester City, according to police and John H. Parkin, Patricia's brother.

For potential investors who see opportunity rather than deterioration and decay in the vacant lots and empty buildings here, the city has come up with an offer to sweeten the pot for some projects: 12 years with no state, county and local tax payments. By the end of the year, the city government, the Chester Upland School District and Delaware County government are expected to approve resolutions that will create Keystone Opportunity Zones in more than 110 acres of land and buildings throughout Chester.

Adelaide Pratt walked five minutes from her home to the landmark building formerly known as the Anchor Hocking Packaging Co. yesterday morning looking to work. "I'm familiar with a place like this," she said, sizing up the aging red-brick structure that has lain dormant since early 1996. "I can do just about anything. " According to Gloucester County officials, almost 8 percent of this town's 15,000 residents are without work. Included in their ranks is 67-year-old Pratt, who still carries in a handbag the imitation gold watch Campbell Soup gave her when it shut down its Camden facility and laid her off in 1990.

The green and white sign hanging from the battered chain-link fence declares it a site dedicated to the recreation of the community. But the swing set in this waterfront park stands bare, its swings ripped from their sockets, resembling a gaping mouth with no teeth. The red and blue slides are marked with graffiti. Only occasionally do blades of grass spring from the dirt. Residents of South Camden's Waterfront South community spend little time wondering why. For behind the abandoned park rise the stacks of the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority sewage-treatment plant, belching smoke into the air. To the left lies the trash burner, which daily incinerates the refuse of more than 500,000 residents.

Talk about clearing the air. A company that has been spewing toxic solvents in the Far Northeast has dramatically throttled back on the pollution. The Kurz-Hastings plant - recent champ among Philadelphia's toxic polluters - has lost that dubious title to the Sun Co.'s South Philadelphia refinery, new figures released yesterday by the Environmental Protection Agency show. In all, Philadelphia industries unleashed more than 1.7 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the air in 1996, including more than 400,000 pounds that wafted into the air at Sun. The Kurz-Hastings plant in an industrial park near Northeast Philadelphia Airport, still put out 273,000 pounds of toxic solvents - toluene and methyl isobutyl ketone, both believed to cause liver and kidney damage; and methyl ethyl ketone, suspected of harming the nervous system and fetal development.

Allison Smits' daily stroll past the industrial park in the Far Northeast Philadelphia left her stunned yesterday. The Montgomery County resident witnessed the aftermath of a tornado that struck the cluster of warehouses and factories near early Monday. "I walk by there every day and I can't believe how this place looks," Smits said. "It's hard to believe it could be perfectly fine one day and almost completely destroyed the next. " Frances Egan, commissioner of the city Department of Licenses and Inspections said, "Employees who have been here for 25 years have said this is the worst disaster they have ever seen.

Storms cut a large swath across the state yesterday, including heavy damage between Willow Grove and Northeast Philadelphia caused by a tornado. At least two people were killed in the western part of the state and electrical power was knocked out for thousands in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The tornado here, which hit a little after 1 a.m., left one Willow Grove man especially thankful his family survived. "I already have my gift. Everyone in my family is alive," said Jerry DiMarzio, executive director of the Willow Inn, on Old York Road, in Willow Grove.

During daylight hours, the sprawling business and industrial park east of Roosevelt Boulevard off Southampton Road in far Northeast Philadelphia is home to an army of workers. But early yesterday morning, as the explosive storm ripped through the area, the buildings were empty. "If this had hit at 1:30 in the afternoon, we would have had injuries and possibly worse back in here," said Police Officer John Long, as he surveyed what a city worker estimated was millions of dollars of damage in the ravaged park.

On one side lies a sewage-treatment plant, on another a trash-to-steam plant, and on a third Route 676. Now South Camden faces a new threat, residents say: City efforts to encourage development of a "business campus" and light manufacturing on land north of their community. Residents - who have already filed a lawsuit seeking to end the foul odors emanating from the sewage plant - say more businesses there would leave them completely surrounded by roads and industry. Yesterday, they took their frustrations to Mayor Milton Milan and left feeling somewhat better about their future.