KERSEY -- A Clearfield County man was killed in February in a landslide at Greentree Landfill.
New documents obtained by 6 News almost three months after William Pierce's death help shed light into what employees knew days and possibly weeks before the fatal accident.
Among the new details, employees of Advanced Disposal Services witnessed a vertical crack on the landfill cell that eventually collapsed two days before, according to a general inspection report by Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.
'The last telephone call'
Peggy Delp said she spoke to Pierce, her significant other for the last six years, at lunchtime on Feb. 8.
For her, lunch time calls were an everyday occurrence with the love of her life.
This one was different, though. It was her last phone call with Pierce.
"The last telephone call I had from him, he said that the landfill had dropped two feet and it was bulging on the sides," said Delp, "and he was scared. "
"It was his lunch time because he said he had to go back up and -- Billy didn't complain about things. He wouldn't leave the situation if he ever thought anybody was in harm. He manned up to everything and I'm sure when he was doing his job he was doing it to the best of his ability to do things the right way, all along with the second family he had," Delp said.
That second family, Delp said, was his work family.
Pierce was proud of his job and she was proud of him, said Delp.
Federal and state investigations
Three months have gone by and the investigations continue.
Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the state's DEP are leading separate examinations of the accident at Greentree.
OSHA, DEP and state police met to discuss the investigation on March 29.
OSHA was chosen as the lead agency to investigate, according to state police spokesperson trooper Bruce Morris.
OSHA is not commenting at this time and 6 News does not have access to any of the federal agency's reports.
But state records are available.
It led 6 News to DEP's regional office in Meadville, Pa. to sift through thousands of pages of documentation relating to Greentree Landfill.
Among those documents: general inspection reports.
One general inspection report written and dated six days after the collapse at Greentree. The site inspection was conducted by DEP on Feb. 9, the day after the landslide, according to the document.
It shows a summary of events from the day of the slide with interviews with several Advanced Disposal staffers.
The report states that two days before the slide, "a vertical crack" was seen on the landfill slope.
"Settling cracks were observed in the active disposal area," the report reads. "The cracks at the working face were staked, recorded with GPS and filled."
The next day, Feb. 7, the site appeared to be stable, per employees interviewed by DEP.
On the day of the slide, the report stats the crack came back.
"The crack was reportedly 4 - 5 feet wide by 100 feet long. The active disposal area was moved further in towards Cell 9 (away from Cell 10B), away from the crack,” the report reads. “A bulge in the intermediate cover was observed on the south-facing side of Cell 10B. The bulge was next to the area where an access road was previously located.”
The report states that at around 2pm, the hillside gave way. Workers were evacuated just before the slide.
“At around 2:00 p.m., the intermediate cover on the south side of Cell 10B split open, causing a slide that was approximately 8 feet in width. Almost immediately, the waste mass in Cells 9 and 10B started to shift,” the report states. “Approximately 3 acres of the waste mass slide to the south and west. Of that, 1 to 2 acres of waste had likely spread beyond the lined area.
“At the time of this inspection, work was focused on finding the missing compactor and shoring up the high walls to facilitate search efforts.”
State police said all employees escaped, unharmed, except Pierce.
Employee speaks out
An employee at Greentree Landfill spoke to 6 News on condition of anonymity.
He asked not to show his face during an on-camera interview in April.
The employee said he was at work the day of the collapse. He said, “it wasn’t a surprise” that a landslide occurred.
“(When it became light outside that day) at around 7:15 am, you could see the cracks have gotten bigger since the day before,” the employee said. “It didn’t look good at all.
“At that time on Wednesday morning, (the cracks) were probably 10 to 12 feet wide and 75 to 100 feet long. Maybe, uhh, 30 to 40 feet deep.
The employee said the cracks began forming weeks before the landslide.
“It started Jan. 23. (That day) is the first day that the cracks were noticeable,” the employee said.
On March 20, just 40 days after the collapse, DEP sent a notice of violation to Advanced Disposal.
DEP wrote that “information obtained through interviews with Advanced Disposal Services personnel revealed there were problems with significant cracks and settling in the active disposal area since at least mid-January, 2017,” according to the document.
Greentree staff did not note cracks and settling in daily operational records until Feb. 2, according to the violation notice.
The notice of violation, according to the document, “is neither an order nor any other final action of the Department of Environmental Protection. It neither imposes nor waives any enforcement action available to the Department under any of its statutes.”
6 News made numerous attempts to speak with Greentree Landfill management on camera.
Mark Nighbor, a spokesperson at Advanced Disposal, denied our request, citing the ongoing investigation.
Instead, he sent the following statement:
"Advanced Disposal is continuing to cooperate with the Pennsylvania DEP and OSHA to investigate the cause of the accident at the Greentree Landfill. Identifying the cause is a complex and lengthy process and we are not at a stage in the investigation to discuss the accident. It would be premature for anyone to speculate on the cause or impact until the investigation is complete."“Every day, every day (I think about this landslide),” said the employee. “I wake up at night time.”
‘It’s hard to remember Billy and not laugh or smile’
While the investigations continue, family and friends are speaking about who was William Pierce.
Friends remembered their Saturdays and Sundays together at Norm’s Gas Station in DuBois.
Everyone who spoke with 6 News described him in the same light: a happy, humorous man who loved to hunt to hunt, fish and go camping.
Family spoke on the record for the first time since Pierce’s death to 6 News in April.
They did not want any video recording due to the raw emotions they continue to feel months after his death and only allowed for photographs to be taken and their voices to be recorded.
Delp and her three children said they want people to know Pierce’s first love was his family and friends.
It was 48 hours of not knowing.
For Pierce’s family, two days felt like two years.
“The telephone call was horrendous for me,” said Delp. “I called my children. We ran up there as fast as we could.”
“I had to keep questioning and asking myself, ‘Is this real? Like are we all really here for this?’” said Amanda Maines, one of Pierce’s three step-children.
The family said it was God and each other that got them through the waiting and the news that Pierce didn’t make it.
“I think it is one of the most horrible things to hear,” said Delp. “But without family, friends around, I don’t know what I would have done.”
Around 400 people attended Pierce’s funeral, said the family, with an atmosphere all four described as positive, not somber.
“It’s hard to remember Billy and not laugh or not smile,” said Amanda Maines. “When you met him for a moment, you met him forever.”
Kyle Maines, Delp’s son said Pierce was “just a character.”
It brought laughs to the room as Delp, Kyle Maines, Amanda Maines and Krystina Palumbo, Delp’s third daughter, remembered the man as he was, not what happened to him.
“He was also a very old soul in a sense of how he treated people with lots of respect and caring,” Delp said.
Delp said she gave Pierce something he always wanted: a family.
He got three step-children and a now six-year-old granddaughter.
Amanda Maines said her daughter still talks about her “pop-pop.”
“Oh yes, she still makes him pictures. She sends mail in the mailbox for him,” said Amanda Maines.
For this family, Pierce may be gone. But he is not forgotten.
The family had three stuffed bears made from his work jeans and shirt, and a pillow made from something he wore all the time: suspenders.
“He was very proud of those and we were proud of him,” Delp smiled, “and they were very special.”
“The suspenders were needed,” Palumbo said to another laugh in the room.
It’s just one simple way they continue to remember Pierce.
“To me, I think it’s all laughing, joking around, nothing serious. When I think of Billy, there’s nothing serious. Even if he was like upset, I would laugh because, ‘Okay, his lower lip is out, he’s a baby.’ You know, like, so you just can’t, I could never take him serious,” said Palumbo. “He would not want anybody upset. If he saw you were upset, he would do something silly to make you happy and to make you smile.”
“You just kind of continue to remember the fun that we had,” said Kyle Maines, “and we still have gatherings with my uncles and my cousins and all that we did before and just kind of tell our stories and got to remember him that way.
“it’s like he’s still there.”
Delp and her children call Pierce an old-fashioned man, even when it came to his cellphone.
He would text the phrase to Delp everyday “iloveyouyearcome,” with no capital letters and no spaces.
She said that phrase will be engraved on his headstone between his and her name.
As the family grieves, so too do workers at Greentree.
About a two-foot cross stands at the foot of the main office at the landfill with an inscription of ‘Billy’ for Pierce.
Another inspection, another notice of violation
A little more than an hour before 6 News was set to release our reports, DEP confirmed that it again inspected Greentree Landfill.
This inspection took place in April and revealed another violation.
According to the DEP's notice of violation letter, Greentree did not note settling, cracking and soil movement that reportedly happened in the landslide area in their daily operational records.
The Department wrote it was not notified of the incident.
This is not the first time Greentree reportedly did not note cracking in its landfill in its DORs. Those are allegations DEP raised in a March notice of violations letter after the landfill collapse.
Significant settling, cracking and soil movement was seen by a DEP inspector during an April 26 inspection at Greentree Landfill, according to the notice sent to Advanced Disposal on May 2.
The cracking happened near the landslide area, per the violation notice.
"Mr. Rudy Pollino, Operations Manager was interviewed on site. Mr. Pollino indicated the significant settling, cracking and soil movement had occurred over the previous weekend after a rainstorm," the notice reads.
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