Community Reacts to Sugar Refinery's Fines

The latest news about the sugar refinery isn't only affecting victims and their families. Those who live in Port Wentworth tell us they're shocked about OSHA's findings.

We sat down with two neighbors who we first spoke with a few days after the explosion. Now, more than five months later, they say the pain hasn't gone away. Especially after you find out the explosion could have been prevented, and so many lives could have been saved.

"That's the part that blows my mind," says former Port Wentworth Mayor Bill Chant. He lives just a few yards from the sugar refinery's entrance.

"It used to be a very close-knit family. The house next door was sugar refinery. The one on the corner was sugar refinery. The two across the street were sugar refinery," says Bill. But now employees and their families live throughout our area, and the sadness of what happened also spreads to their communities.

"We still pray for them and we still feel for them," says Naomi Berliner. She lives near Bill in Port Wentworth.

As they sit with his wife on their back patio, they can't help but talk about the safety violations at Imperial Sugar. "If they were so aware of it and they said they had been warned, why didn't they do something?" says Naomi.

Naomi thinks this situation will at the least make businesses more aware of working conditions. But for those affected, that's not good enough.

"I'm not sure we'll ever recover from it. Life will go on. We know that. But I don't think this is something that will be easily forgotten," says Naomi.

Then there's OSHA's penalties against Imperial: more than 8 million dollars. Naomi says, "If they owe that, then the owe it. I would like to know where all this money is going to go? Is it going to help the people? But then I heard it won't go to help the people that were injured."

And it's those people, those employees Bill says Imperial should have considered long before the explosion. "People don't care until they get a fine socked on them for eight million bucks. Maybe now they'll do something," says Bill.