Feb 8, 2008, 17:00 GMT
Washington - The bodies of three people were found and a further three people were presumed dead in a massive explosion that injured dozens more at a sugar refinery in the south-eastern state of Georgia, authorities said Friday.
More than 60 people were injured and 15 remained in critical condition with severe burns after the blast, which occurred Thursday night near the city of Savannah. The fire had been contained but not yet extinguished by Friday morning.
Police said efforts to rescue the missing had been halted.
'This has really shifted from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,' Savannah-Chatham County Police Chief Michael Berkow said in broadcast remarks.
Savannah Fire Department officials said the explosion happened Thursday in the bagging section of the factory. An investigation into the cause of the blast was ongoing, but authorities speculated that sugar dust from the refining process may have ignited.
Police evacuated some areas near the Imperial Sugar refinery in the Fort Wentworth area of suburban Savannah shortly after the explosion and subsequent fire. The worst injured were airlifted to a special to a burn centre in Augusta.
'We heard the explosion and we saw the sparks and the flames shoot up,' Joyce Baker, the first emergency responder on the scene, told local station WTOC-TV.
'The ground shook, my husband was with me and we raced over here. He's a Port Wentworth police officer. I got my trauma bag out and by the time we got out there, there were already 13 people coming out with third degree burns and it was like walking into hell,' she said.
Reports said residents as far away Garden City and Levy, in the neighbouring state of South Carolina, heard and in some cases felt the explosion.
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