Photo courtesy of KDKA 2 Pittsburgh from its story Authorities Trying to ID Bones Found at Gas Well Fire Site. Used with permission.
Ian McKee, a 27 year-old fracking contractor who worked for Cameron International has been missing and is presumed dead following a February 11 explosion at Chevron’s Lanco 7H fracking well in Dunkard Township, Greene County, Pennsylvania. The Greene County Coroner’s office told EarthDesk that DNA analysis of human remains found at the site are still underway, but an attorney for the family said, “The hope that Ian will come from work no longer exists.”
According to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:
Ian McKee and fiancee Danielle Desposito. Courtesy McKee Family.
Adam Nightingale, Cameron’s vice president of human resources, said Mr. McKee, who is originally from Warren, lived most recently in Morgantown with his fiancee, who is pregnant with his child and is due in July.
Samuel Davis, a New Jersey attorney representing Danielle Desposito and Mr. McKee’s estate, said Wednesday night that the couple, together five years, had planned to buy a home and get married.
“This has been a very difficult day in an [extremely] horrific week” for the family, said Mr. Davis, the family spokesman. “She was in a way comforted that they would be able to have a funeral with some recovered part of Ian, and on the other side, the finding … brought a degree of finality.
Following the explosion, Chevron mailed a letter of apology along with gift certificates for pizza and soda to residents. The insensitive gesture went viral.
More than 166,000 web-based stories about the explosion mention the pizza but fail to mention Ian. The top six stories about the Chevron explosion in a Google News search today featured headlines about pizza. Most recently, on February 24, the environmental news site EcoWatch ran a story about a petition demanding an apology for the pizza offer, along with the now required image of a half-eaten pizza. Neither the story nor the demand for an apology mention Ian.
A search for “Ian McKee” at the Cameron International website brought up no stories.
