Lives and a Georgia Community’s Anchor Are Lost

By SHAILA DEWAN

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — A day after an explosive fireball cratered the sprawling Dixie Crystal sugar refinery, the anchor of this small community for decades, families of missing workers waited in a Catholic church across the street on Friday as rescue workers tried to determine the human toll.

By late afternoon, four bodies had been found and four more workers were missing, officials said. More than three dozen workers were injured, some with severe burns.

Rescuers were facing ever-more-difficult conditions as they searched. Flooding in parts of the ruined, century-old plant was eight feet deep, the fire still burned and the building was no longer structurally sound. Search efforts had to stop until heavy equipment could be brought in to dismantle the wreckage, said Sgt. Michael Wilson of the Savannah-Chatham Metropolitan Police Department.