Nineteen people are missing and feared dead following a huge explosion at a military munitions plant in Tennessee.
The powerful blast ripped through the explosives manufacturing plant in rural Tennessee on Friday morning, rattling homes miles away and bringing emergency services to the scene, authorities and residents said.
Upon being asked at a news conference on Friday afternoon to describe the scene, the Humphreys county sheriff, Chris Davis, replied: “There’s nothing to describe. It’s gone.”
He added that the explosion was “one of the most devastating situations I’ve been on in my career”.
The incident occurred at Accurate Energetic Systems near the town of Bucksnort, about 60 miles south-west of Nashville, the Hickman county sheriff’s office said. The agency asked people in a social media post to avoid the area to allow responders to do their work.
Further blasts were initially keeping rescuers at some distance, David Stewart, a Hickman county advanced EMT, told the Associated Press by telephone.
Some time later on Friday morning, access was achieved and first responders and explosives experts were searching the rubble for casualties and trying to determine what caused the explosion.
There were casualties and injuries related to the explosion, but the Tennessee emergency management agency was not yet sharing any numbers early on Friday afternoon because the state department of health had not confirmed them, spokesperson Kristin Coulter said by telephone.
“We can confirm that we do have some that are deceased,” Davis said
In a later news conference on Friday, Davis said: “We have not notified all the families. We are still reaching out to the families.
“It’s a massive situation.”
He went on to say: “It’s hell. It’s hell on us. It’s hell on everybody involved … I can tell you right off the top of my head that there’s three families that’s involved in this that I’m very close to.”
Davis went on to urge residents to notify law enforcement of any unfamiliar debris that they may spot on their properties, saying: “That’s something we need to get recovered – and because it could have information that we need for the investigation.”
Accurate Energetic Systems, which makes and tests explosives and is based in nearby McEwen, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment on Friday morning. The cause of the explosion is not yet known.
In an email to the Associated Press, McEwen’s mayor, Brad Rachford, said: “This is a tragedy for our community.”
Video from the scene showed a burning debris field with smoke billowing into the air. WTVF-TV in Nashville broadcast images of debris strewn about the site, with damaged vehicles in a parking lot. The news station said it received calls from people in the area who felt a large explosion.
Residents in Lobelville, more than a 20-minute drive from the manufacturer, said they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.
The blast rattled Gentry Stover from his sleep.
“I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it,” he told the AP by phone. “I live very close to Accurate and I realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”
Tennessee’s governor, Bill Lee, responded to Friday’s blast on X, saying: “We are monitoring the ongoing situation in Hickman county & state agencies are responding in partnership with local & federal agencies. We ask Tennesseans to join us in prayer for the families impacted by this tragic incident.”
