'Skin just dripping off them'

2008-02-09 08:41

Smoke still billows from a section of the Imperial Sugar Company plant after an explosion ripped apart the plant on the Savannah River in Port Wentworth. (Stephen Morton, AP)

Galleries   ·   User Galleries   ·   News in Pictures Send us your pictures  ·  Send us your stories

Washington - Three people were killed and at least three more are missing and feared dead after a huge blast ripped through a sugar refinery in the US state of Georgia, injuring dozens, authorities said on Friday.

More than 100 people were inside a building in which the sugar is packed into bags at the Imperial Sugar Co near Savannah when the blast took place at around 19:30 on Thursday, Savannah Fire Department Captain Matthew Stanley said.

The cause of blast remained unknown, but refinery managers said it could have been caused by sugar powder, Stanley said.

Georgia fire official John Oxendine, who earlier announced that six people were confirmed dead, said there was some initial confusion as rescue workers tried to navigate dangerous conditions, and that officials later determined they had actually found three bodies.

"We suspect that there are additional bodies but only three have been removed," Oxendine told AFP.

"Counting the three bodies we have removed, we suspect that there might be six dead or more," he said, adding that none of the bodies have yet been identified and the "building where the explosion occurred is very unstable."

Horrific injuries

Oxendine told CNN that officials were also "very concerned about the people at the Augusta burn unit and what may be their condition."

Witnesses described horrific injuries among those who survived the fiery blast.

"Some of them (the victims) had no skin at all. And some of them, it was on their faces. And some had skin just dripping off of them," Joyce Baker, who helped victims at the scene, told CNN.

In such cases "there's really not much we can do initially because we did not have the equipment... but we try to keep them warm and keep them stable and talk to them and then get them in the ambulance units and get them to the hospital as soon as possible," she added.

Stanley said that with sugar, "when that is aerosolized, it can get ionically charged and light off with a bit of static electricity. It's rare but it can happen," he said.

The blast affected three to four large warehouse-type structures in the middle of the refinery's huge industrial complex, Stanley said.

The explosion could be heard throughout the community and shook homes several kilometres away across the river in neighbouring South Carolina, he said.

The area impacted "looks like a small war zone," he said.

- AFP