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"It was quite an explosion. It lasted for several seconds," he said. "It almost felt like an earthquake was taking place."

The factory is close to Global Transpark, a onetime commercial airstrip now used mainly by military aircraft. Christopher White, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta, said no aircraft were involved.

According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the plant was inspected in October, cited for numerous safety violations and fined about $10,000. State labor spokesman Juan Santos said the fine was reduced to $9,075 in an informal settlement Jan. 8.

They say the incident happened around 1:15 p.m. Wednesday afternoon. The TransPark is located at the Regional Jetport in Kinston. It was designed to be a manufacturing and transportation center allowing local companies to deliver products around the world.

I just saw Cherie Berry (R) Commissioner of the NC Dept. of Labor on WRAL and she said that the violations were classified as "serious", but a "serious" violation has varying degrees of severity, and the fines had to do with their Lockout/Tagout program and Confined Space Entry program and other stuff like missing guardrails on steps and the like. She said the OSHA audit was a planned inspections (which means it wasn't in response to any complaints) and that all the violations were abated (meaning all the problems were taken care of) and that the Dept. of Labor was satisfied with how the plant addressed the problems.

Being somewhat familiar with OSHA inspections, I can tell you that when I heard about lockout/tagout and confined space entry violations, the first thing I thought of was that their training paperwork was out of order. Lockout/tagout training either wasn't done or else the paperwork proving the training wasn't completed. As far as OSHA is concerned, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. Also, whenever you enter a confined space, you have to complete a Confined Space Entry permit, which is a checklist showing that all the proper people were notified and everything was done according to OSHA regulations.

It's really not hard to incur $10,000 in fines during an inspection, and the violations, even though they are "serious" don't necessarily mean they were doing anything dangerous, like locking or blocking the exit doors.