No survivors are expected to be found after a major explosion at a munitions factory in Tennessee on Friday that left 18 people missing.
Recovery teams do not expect the missing to be found alive, but they are not giving up hope, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis told a news conference Saturday.
“As we look deeper into this, we find it is even more devastating than we initially thought,” Sheriff Davis said.
It is still unclear what caused the explosion at the plant in Bucksnort, Tennessee, about 60 miles southwest of Nashville. The facility specializes in the development, production, handling and storage of explosives.
Video footage taken Friday showed fires still burning, charred vehicles and smoke rising from the destroyed building. Officials said debris was scattered in a half-mile radius around where the building once stood.
Accurate Energetic Systems, which runs the plant, has suspended operations.
More than 300 state and local first responders have searched the explosion site since Friday morning and have found no survivors, Sheriff Davis said Saturday morning.
“The expectation of everyone who is in that building… we can assume that they are deceased,” he told the media.
By Saturday morning, the rescue mission had shifted to a recovery operation, said Davis, who was visibly asphyxiated.
The FBI also conducts rapid DNA testing to identify victims and notify families.
“We’re trying to focus as much as we can on taking care of their families,” Sheriff Jason Craft of neighboring Hickman County told the BBC.
Residents of a town about 16 miles away could hear the explosion, Davis said.
A local resident who lives about 20 minutes from the facility told the BBC she was sitting at her daughter’s dining room table when she heard it.
“All of a sudden we heard a loud bang. We didn’t know if it was a gun or something,” she said.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is on scene investigating the incident.
In 2014 there was already a fatal explosion at a unit at the same location.
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