Dozens hurt in Georgia sugar refinery explosion

(CNN) -- Dozens of people were injured -- many of them critically -- in an explosion at a sugar refinery near Savannah, Georgia, Thursday evening, law enforcement and medical officials said.

The blast, at Imperial Sugar in Port Wentworth, happened shortly after 7 p.m.

Georgia Emergency Management Agency spokesman Buzz Weiss said hospitals were told to prepare for as many as 100 casualties from the explosion.

By just after 11 p.m., about 40 workers from the plant were being treated at area hospitals, according to Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department Chief Michael Berkow.

Search efforts were ongoing for another 6 workers believe to be still missing inside the plant, he said.

There were no immediate reports of fatalities.

"It was like walking into hell," said Joyce Baker, who was with her husband, a Port Wentworth police officer, at a meeting at nearby City Hall, at the time of the explosion.

Savannah Fire Department officials said they were still fighting the fire at the plant after 11 p.m. -- using a tug boat to blast water onto the blaze from the Savannah River. Watch emergency workers converge on the scene »

"Right now, what we're dealing with is a very unstable structure," said Savannah Fire Chief Charles Middleton. "The explosion did damage to a good portion of the facility."

He said the damage made it difficult for fire and rescue workers to enter much of the four-story plant. Capt. Matt Stanley, of the Savannah Fire Department, said the explosion is believed to have started in a room where workers bag sugar. He said no cause had been determined by late Thursday.

The U.S. Coast Guard said it had closed the Savannah River around the port and that Coast Guard helicopters were searching the river for anyone who might have been thrown into the water. Ambulances and emergency workers from 12 counties had been called in to assist at the scene, Weiss said.

Dr. Jay Goldstein, an emergency room doctor at Memorial Health, said many of the the victims treated through a triage area set up at the hospital were in critical condition.

"We've seen people that have had burns to their hands all the way to about 80 to 90 percent of their body," he said.

Goldstein said some of the victims were being carried by helicopter to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia -- about an hour away -- and other burn hospitals.

Another five workers were being treated at St. Joseph's/Candler Hospital in Savannah, a spokeswoman there said. Two had been released by late Thursday.

The refinery, formerly locally owned Dixie Crystals, is based in Sugar Land, Texas, and is the major employer in the riverside town just northwest of Savannah.

Witnesses in neighboring towns and across the Savannah River in South Carolina reported seeing flames shoot up several stories and hearing the blast.

As family members flocked to the sugar plant Thursday evening, a church across the street was set up for them to wait for their family members. Police were urging them to send only one family member to avoid massive crowds at the site.

"We've got so many family members out here just desperate to hear a word from their loved ones," Baker said to CNN affiliate WTOC-TV in Savannah. E-mail to a friend

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