Nineteen people feared dead after blast at Tennessee munitions plant | Tennessee
19 people are missing and feared dead after a massive explosion at a military ammunition factory in Tennessee.
A powerful explosion ripped through an explosives manufacturing facility in rural Tennessee on Friday morning, shaking homes for miles and bringing emergency services to the scene, authorities and residents said.
At a news conference Friday afternoon, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis, when asked to describe the scene, responded: “There’s nothing to explain. He’s gone.”
He added that the explosion was “one of the most devastating situations I’ve experienced in my career.”
The Hickman County Sheriff’s Office said the incident occurred at Accurate Energetic Systems near the town of Bucksnort, about 60 miles southwest of Nashville. In a social media post, the agency asked people to avoid the area to allow responders to do their job.
David Stewart, an advanced emergency services official in Hickman County, told The Associated Press by phone that further explosions initially kept rescuers at a distance.
Access was regained some time Friday morning, and first responders and explosives experts were searching the debris for injuries and trying to determine what caused the explosion.
There were deaths and injuries related to the explosion, but Tennessee’s emergency management agency had not yet released any numbers as of Friday afternoon because the state health department had not confirmed them, spokeswoman Kristin Coulter said by phone.
“We can confirm that we have some deceased individuals,” Davis said.
At a news conference later Friday, Davis said: “We have not notified all families. We are still reaching out to families.”
“This is a huge situation.”
He continued: “This is hell. This is hell for us. This is hell for everyone involved… I can tell you off the top of my head that there are three families involved that I’m very close to.”
Davis encouraged residents to report any foreign debris they might notice on their property to law enforcement, saying: “This is something we need to recover — and because it may contain information we need for the investigation.”
Accurate Energetic Systems, which manufactures and tests explosives and is based in nearby McEwen, did not immediately respond to a phone message seeking comment Friday morning. The cause of the explosion is not yet known.
“This is a tragedy for our community,” McEwen Mayor Brad Rachford said in an email to The Associated Press.
Video from the scene shows a burning debris field and smoke billowing into the air. WTVF-TV in Nashville broadcast footage of wreckage scattered across the field, along with damaged vehicles in the parking lot. The news station said it received calls from people in the area who felt a large explosion.
Residents of Lobelville, more than a 20-minute drive from the manufacturer, said they felt their homes shake, and some people recorded the loud sound of the explosion on their home cameras.
The explosion woke Gentry Stover from his sleep.
“I thought the house collapsed with me inside,” he told the AP by phone. “I live very close to Accurate and about 30 seconds after waking up I realized it had to be this way.”
Responding to the outburst on X on Friday, Tennessee governor Bill Lee said: “We are monitoring the ongoing situation in Hickman County and state agencies are responding in partnership with local and federal agencies. We ask Tennesseans to join us in praying for the families affected by this tragic event.”
