No survivors found after Tennessee explosives plant blast

No survivors are expected to be found after a major explosion at a Tennessee munitions factory on Friday that has left 18 people unaccounted for.

Recovery teams don’t expect to find any of the missing alive, but they are not giving up hope, Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis told a news conference on Saturday.

“As we get into this, we find it even more devastating than we thought initially,” Sheriff Davis said.

It’s still unclear what caused the explosion at the plant in Bucksnort, Tennessee – roughly 56 miles (90km) south-west of Nashville. The facility specialises in the development, manufacture, handling and storage of explosives.

Video footage taken on Friday showed fires still burning, charred vehicles, and smoke rising from the razed 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 its operations.

More than 300 state and local first responders have been searching the site of the explosion since Friday morning and have not found any survivors, Sheriff Davis said on Saturday morning.

“The expectation of anyone who’s inside of that building… we can assume that they are deceased,” he told media.

By Saturday morning, the rescue mission had shifted to a recovery operation, said Davis, who was visibly choked up.

The FBI is also at the site conducting rapid DNA tests to identify victims and notify families.

“We’re trying to focus as much attention as we can, on taking care of their families,” Sheriff Jason Craft from neighbouring Hickman County told the BBC.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms is at the scene helping to investigate the incident.

There was a previous fatal explosion at a unit in the same location in 2014.

Residents of a town about 15 miles (25km) away could hear the explosion, Sheriff Davis said on Friday.

One local resident who lives about 20 minutes away from the facility told the BBC she was sitting at her daughter’s dining table when she heard it.

“All of a sudden we just a heard a loud bang. We didn’t know if it was a gun or what,” she said.

Another local resident, Lucy Garton, who has lived nearby for six years, didn’t hear the explosion herself but she experienced the aftermath as she was on her way from work on Friday.

“When I came home, the roads were just blocked with state troopers. You had to show up proof that you lived here to get through,” she said. “There was a lot of ambulances, fire trucks, everything, parked down at the gas station.”

She said her husband knows people who worked in the facility.

“I think it will definitely impact the area,” she said. “It’s a very close-knit community and everyone, they’re just simple people, go to work every day, take care of their families and just real a family-oriented community.”

She said a lot of people in the area are employed at the plant, adding, “I’m sure it’ll be hard for them to go back to work after such a tragedy.”