Port Wentworth (US): Firefighters all but extinguished a blaze at a sugar refinery today that had been burning since an explosion late Thursday leveled the building, killing four people, leaving four missing and injured dozens of others.

Crews had reduced the flames to small hotspots at the Imperial Sugar Company refinery, and search teams that had backed out overnight because of structural concerns from the blast resumed looking for the last of the missing in the morning, Fire Chief Greg Long said. "We have an idea of where they are," Long said. "We didn't want to collapse anything."

The chief said he strongly believed the four men three workers and a supervisor, all of whom Long said he knew personally were the only people still unaccounted for from the blast, and he held out hope that they were still alive. "We operate on the policy that everyone is alive until we get to them," he said.

Crews brought in heavy equipment today to remove debris as investigators continued assessing what sparked the blast that ignited a storage silo. At least four flatbed trucks carrying segments of a giant crane and other machinery rolled through the refinery s front gates. Imperial Sugar was one of the largest, and oldest, employers in this tiny city of 5,000 just a few kilometers west of Savannah. The sudden blast that rattled the city late Thursday engulfed the refinery in flames.

Investigators were unable to determine what sparked the explosion as firefighters stamped out flames inside the vast refinery - a network of warehouses, silos and buildings eight stories tall connected by corridors of sheet metal.

Source : PTI