Sugar

I meant to do a fabulous post thanking a bunch of people for awards that have been bestowed on me recently (despite the fact that I've done very little actual blogging, what's wrong with you people?), but an incident last night has pre-empted my orginally scheduled post. So, Mya, Dumdad and Jo, I promise, you will get your due in a couple of days, but there's something much more important I need to cover this morning.

Last night, there was an explosion at the Imperial Sugar Refinery, a few miles down the highway from where I live, in Port Wentworth, Georgia. It used to be the Dixie Crystals refinery, before Imperial bought them out, and it's been part of the Savannah landscape for generations. Whole families have worked there, one generation after another, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters.

It appears sugar dust in a silo next to the bagging facility may have combusted, according to a company CEO who just happened to be in town this week, and as we all know, sugar is very flammable. No official cause has been given as I write this. Most of the injuries appear to be burn related, with around ten people airlifted to the burn center in Augusta, which is north of here. Several people are in critical condition. Part of the Savannah River is still closed to boat traffic, so tankers and container ships are still backed up out into the sea waiting to port and unload.

There appears to be a total of 41 injured, with six people still unaccounted for. Firefighters had the blaze under control, but there are still some hot spots in the building that are keeping them from searching for the missing.

The most amazing thing to me about the whole incident, is how quickly emergency teams responded with ambulances and fire crews coming from miles and miles away, from many different counties. A church across the street was being used for triage (it's now being used as a family information center), and the local elementary school is still being used as a staging area for emergency personnel and media. The Coast Guard patrolled the river, and the local Air National Guard unit contributed large scale firefighting equipment.

We have wonderful neighbours living in this community, people who care, and for that, I'm thankful.

Please keep all of the workers and their families in your thoughts, or your prayers, if you're so inclined.

For more info on this story, you can check out some our local TV coverage here, and here.

PS: One other thing... I used to live in Memphis, and I'm very familiar with the area that was destroyed by the tornadoes this week. I'm very lucky that no one I know was injured, but I'm one of the lucky ones. Keep those folks in your thoughts, too.