Death toll rises in explosion at sugar refinery

PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. -- As his two nephews lay unconscious in their hospital beds, bandages covering horrific burns from a sugar refinery fire, Hallie Capers prayed and asked them aloud how they were doing.

He knew John Calvin Butler Jr. and his younger brother, Jamie, couldn't hear him. They were still in a medically induced coma Saturday, two days after a massive explosion and fire devastated the refinery.

"It's just shocking to me to really see it, to walk in and see them like that -- how bad they were, their faces, hands, arms, their whole bodies," Capers said by phone from the Joseph M. Still burn center in Augusta.

Families and co-workers of 20 refinery employees hospitalized with severe burns, including 17 in medically induced comas, anxiously awaited any sign of recovery Saturday.

"It's just hours of waiting right now," said Capers, a Baptist minister from Hampton, S.C. "We pray and hope that when we do get some news, it'll be good news."

Good news was scarce Saturday as firefighters pulled another body from the plant outside Savannah, raising the death toll to five. Three men remained missing.

The search was halted at sunset because the debris-strewn refinery remained too hazardous for nighttime searches.

Fire Chief Greg Long said the body was found near the plant's three 80-foot storage silos, one of which ignited like a bomb during the night shift Thursday.

The blast and fire left much of the massive plant dangerously unstable, and crews had to shore up the sagging upper floors in a four-story building Saturday before resuming searching for the missing men.

Firefighters had all but extinguished the fire that had raged in the refinery since the explosion.

Officials clung to slim hope that the missing men could be found alive, Long said.

"We operate on the policy that everyone is alive until we get to them," he said.