One of the two people killed in the Pennsylvania steel factory explosion Monday has been identified as a father who came from a steel mill working family.
Timothy Quinn, 39, was pronounced dead at the scene of the blast at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works plant, the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office said Tuesday.
The second person killed has yet to be identified. At least 10 people were injured, officials said.
Quinn was a father of three, his sister Trisha Quinn told NBC affiliate WXPI of Pittsburgh.
She told the station that she had drove 45 minutes from Jefferson to the plant in Clairton, 15 miles southeast of Pittsburgh, following news of the explosion around 11 a.m. on Monday.
At first, Quinn said, she couldn’t find her brother and feared he was seriously hurt or killed. His partner at the facility told her that he had been loaded into an ambulance and may have been killed.
“The steel mill is not giving families any information, and there’s no crisis line to go to,” Trisha Quinn told WXPI on Monday. “I’ve been on the phone since 12 o’clock. We drove up from Jefferson, my brother’s not here. Families need answers. This is a crisis situation, and we have nobody to call to see where our loved ones are.”
Trisha Quinn told the station that her father worked at the steel mill for over four decades, and she called for better communication with worker families.
“My dad worked at the steel mill for 42 years, and he would be disgusted at what the situation is right now. Accidents happen but … they need communication with the family,” she said. “We need answers, we need them now, even if it’s not what we want to hear, we need to know something.”
Investigators are working to determine the cause of the explosion.
The U.S. Steel facility annually produces millions o