Feb 08 2008
“Like Walking Into Hell”
That is how Joyce Baker, a woman who rushed to help victims of a sugar refinery explosion in Georgia described the scene after the blast erupted.
Six people were missing Friday after the Imperial Sugar refinery in Port Wentworth, Georgia, exploded Thursday night — a blast so powerful it shook homes miles across the Savannah River in neighboring South Carolina. No fatalities were reported.
"There was an explosion into the air with debris and a fireball that was probably five or six times as tall as the tallest trees here," said Lt. Alan Baker of the Port Wentworth Police Department. "It's the biggest explosion I've ever seen in my life."
Capt. Matt Stanley of the Savannah Fire Department said it was possible that sugar dust from refining process had ignited, sparking the blast.
"The managers of the refinery believe that it may have been sugar powder, when that is aerosolized, it can get ionically charged and light off with just a bit of static electricity," said Stanley. "It's very rare, but it can happen."
Investigators said they believe the disaster started in a room where workers bag sugar.
Lt. Baker and his wife Joyce Baker were at nearby City Hall when the blast "shook the ground," he told CNN's "American Morning."
Joyce Baker, who teaches first aid for the Red Cross, said she raced to the scene and pitched in.
"It was like walking into hell," she said.
"We had approximately 13 men who were coming out [of the plant], and they were burned — third-degree burns on their upper bodies," she said. "And they were trying to sit down and the only thing that they wanted was to know where the friends were."
Sixty-two people were taken to Savannah-area hospitals, said Buzz Weiss, spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. Forty of them were treated and released; 13 were admitted; and nine were life-flighted to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta.
Dust explosions can be incredibly powerful. It's just a big fuel-air explosion. These types of explosions are actually not all that uncommon, although things have been improving in recent years. It seems like there used to be one or two grain silos detonating every year not that long ago. Here's an OSHA document on combustible dust hazards that details some of the deadly incidents that have happened.
