Blast at Tennessee explosives plant leaves multiple people dead and missing

This is a developing story last updated at 8:38 p.m. Friday.

An explosion at a Tennessee military munitions plant left multiple people dead and missing on Friday morning and left first responders searching through wreckage and a community grieving.

The incident occurred at Accurate Energetic Systems, a company that processes explosives. The cause is not yet known.

As of Friday night, officials said 18 people were unaccounted for and feared dead. As notifications of families were underway, one worker was found to be safe at home, revising downward an early count from officials.

A few additional people were also hospitalized, according to Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis.

“Can I describe the building? There’s nothing to describe. It’s gone. It’s the most devastating scene that I have seen in my career,” Davis said.

The sheriff says learning whether the explosion was intentional or accidental will remain unanswered for some time while an investigation takes place. It happened near the town of Bucksnort, about 60 miles southwest of Nashville. The Associated Press reported that emergency responders were initially unable to go in because explosions are continuing.

“We’ve just got to take one day at a time or one hour at a time,” Davis said. “There’s not going to be a short explanation.”

Officials said more than 300 emergency personnel responded Friday and that a national team from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, was expected to work the scene this weekend. Residents were asked to call the local sheriff if they encounter debris.

State Rep. Jody Barrett, R-Hickman, said the community has faced multiple, deadly disasters in his lifetime, including a gas pipeline explosion in Dickson, a flood in Waverly and now a factory explosion.

“This county has dealt with a lot of tragic loss like this, more than their fair share,” Barrett said.

He suggested local first responders on scene Friday were “probably still struggling with some of the PTSD of dealing with pulling bodies out of trees.”

The sheriff spoke again to reporters around 4:45 p.m and told them his first priority was speaking with the victims’ family members — some of whom he and other law enforcement officers know well.

“You want me to be honest? Any time we do something like this, just like I said in the flood, it’s hell,” Davis said. “But from the time we try to start seeing what we’re seeing, putting things together, talking to families, talking to victims, taking interviews, and arranging it, it is hell. It’s hell on us. It’s hell on everybody involved.”

The impact

Video from the scene showed a burning debris field with smoke billowing into the air.

Residents in Lobelville, more than a 20-minute drive from the manufacturer, said they felt their homes shake and some people captured the loud boom of the explosion on their home cameras.

The blast rattled Gentry Stover from his sleep. “I thought the house had collapsed with me inside of it,” he told the AP by phone. “I live very close to Accurate and I realized about 30 seconds after I woke up that it had to have been that.”

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Greg Wilkes, of Only, TN, was in a deer blind 15 miles away when he felt the explosion.

Greg Wilkes, of the town of Only, was in a deer blind 15 miles away when he felt the explosion. He told WPLN News he could see the shockwaves ripple through the trees and immediately knew this was something bigger and worse than the usual testing explosions.

John McEwen was at his home in Williamsport, about 27 miles away.

“I was getting ready for work this morning and I heard, or I felt just kind of the house … was shaken or jarred a little bit. I thought somebody may have hit my home or ran into it … we weren’t sure what had happened.”

The company

Here’s what we know about the site of the blast: Accurate Energetic Systems processes a variety of explosive products for the military, commercial demolition firms and the aerospace industry.

AES is a large facility that covers about 1300 acres, including eight buildings and at least one laboratory.

According to a safety document about the facility prepared for federal regulators, the company handles large amounts of TNT. That means any fires that break out there must be handled with extreme caution. The document advises that firefighting teams should use a dry powder agent instead of water, and focus on isolating the area and evacuating people, to quote, “using as much protective cover as possible.”

Military devices are a particular area of focus for the company. The facility has held defense contracts related to a wide variety of mines and demolition charges. In addition to those products, the facility also carries out tests of explosive devices in development.

The company was founded in 1980, but its relationship with the federal government really took off in 2018. According to the government contract tracking tool GovTribe, AES has done more than 100 million dollars worth of business on federal contracts since 2002.

In a video statement, CEO Wendall Stinson asked for prayers.

“Our hearts are broken for the families.”

WPLN journalists Cynthia Abrams, Camellia Burris and Caroline Eggers contributed to this report.