ROSELAND — While the public waits for an explanation into what caused a massive explosion at Smitty's in Roseland, a former employee tells the WBRZ Investigative Unit it was only a matter of time.

The employee, whom we will refer to by her last name, 'Padilla,' worked as an administrator at Smitty's from 2021 to 2023. Her job was to handle all the paperwork for the trucks leaving the docks and transporting materials, but there was an aspect of her job she claims she did not agree to.

"We were told to make it look like a non-hazmat order," Padilla said about what she was required to write in paperwork. "No placards, no red steel on it, just a regular truck doing a regular route, and I was uncomfortable with that."

In a complaint she filed with the Department of Environmental Quality, chemicals leaving the facility included toluene, methanol, heptane and acetone mix - all extremely volatile and flammable materials.

"I'm telling you there'd be like 22 pallets of hazardous material and then the last two pallets are just normal, so when they pop open the truck and D.O.T.(Department of Transportation) looks at it, they're not seeing anything too suspicious."

In the complaint, Padilla states that she was instructed to “white out the X mark” indicating a hazardous material and the description of the class of hazmat on the paperwork.

She says in October of 2022, a driver told her that he “had gotten into some trouble” for material being on his truck that wasn’t documented.

Padilla says she asked management if what she was doing was legal and was told it depended on the quantity or weight of the material. Still unconvinced, she asked to be shown the law that allows this, and instead was given an employee handbook.

Padilla's complaint is one of 70 incident reports filed with LDEQ involving Smitty's, dating back to 2011. She says that because of all this, what happened at the facility on Friday is not a shock.

"I was not surprised. There was just constant accidents happening in there. Constantly trying to cover things up. Constantly not having the right equipment for the job. Not having the right safety precautions for the job. Everybody was just doing whatever."

She says many of her former coworkers share that lack of surprise.

"I have some friends there who were still working there who were texting me, being like 'OMG it happened. It finally went down in flames.’ And I was like, I am not surprised because they have no type of safety there."

DEQ closed the investigation because, according to the report, the department does not regulate hazardous materials - only waste. The complaint was forwarded to the U.S. Department of Transportation and it's unclear what happened after that.