By Prentiss Findlay
The Post and Courier
PORT WENTWORTH, Ga. — For a split second, Donald Farmer thought he was going to meet his maker when the Imperial Sugar refinery plant exploded Thursday night in Port Wentworth, Ga.
“I was saying to myself, ‘Is this it right here?’ I wasn’t afraid. I was surprised and shocked,” Farmer said Wednesday. “Everything happened so quick, I didn’t know what to think. I still don’t know what happened.”
Farmer was loading 50-pound bags of brown sugar on the third floor of the packaging plant when the blast tossed him into the air. “I was almost up to the ceiling. When it dropped me I didn’t feel anything. It’s like there wasn’t a body up there,” he said.
While struggling to find his way outside, Farmer saw concrete floors buckled like a tent, walls torn apart, windows blown out and debris all over the place. He heard a worker scream for help. “It was just like an earthquake the way it looked,” he said.
Farmer, 57, of Hinesville, Ga., about 30 miles from Savannah, didn’t realize he was burned until he reached safety and saw blisters bubbling on both arms. He doesn’t believe it was luck that saved him. “God got me out alive. I was blessed to get out of there only by the grace of Jesus Christ,” he said.
Farmer borrowed a cell phone to call his wife Gilda to tell her what happened. “I’m doing fine, but I got some bad news for you. The sugar plant blew up and I’ve got burns on my arms,” he said.
She wasn’t watching TV, so she didn’t know about the blast. “I broke down in tears. The only thing I kept thinking is ‘Are you OK?’ ” she said. The Farmers have five sons who range in age from 22 to 36, and their mother contacted them to come home.
Farmer was burned on about 20 percent of his body, he said. He was taken to Memorial Hospital in Savannah, then flown by helicopter to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center at Doctors Hospital in Augusta, where he stayed until Sunday. On Wednesday, Farmer made his first visit to the outpatient burn clinic at Trident Regional Medical Center in North Charleston.
Hospital Corporation of America owns Doctors Hospital and Trident Regional Medical Center.
“All we can do is take it one day at a time,” Farmer said.
Last Thursday, Farmer was scheduled to join other employees after his shift ended at 10:15 p.m. to meet Imperial Sugar Co.'s new chief executive officer, John Sheptor, who had been on the job for a week. The plant employed 450 people.
Sheptor said Imperial Sugar plans to repair the plant and reopen, but there’s no telling how quickly. Farmer said he would go back to work at the plant. “The plant treated me fairly. I had no trouble with them,” he said.
Seven people are confirmed dead in the blast and one worker remained missing Wednesday. Fire officials said they worry that a large blaze could flare up again, as the sugar still bubbles at temperatures as high as 4,000 degrees and three more fires ignited Tuesday.
Thick masses of molten sugar were still smoldering even after a helicopter dumped thousands of gallons on the fire, the Associated Press reported.
The Imperial Sugar Co. refinery sits on a 160-acre site on the Savannah River upstream from Savannah. The plant is 872,000 square feet. About 12 percent of it - 111,000 square feet - was destroyed, said company spokesman Steve Behm. The operation is split into a packaging plant and a sugar refinery. The blast happened in the packaging plant.
Three injured workers have been released from Doctors Hospital in Augusta, where 17 workers remained hospitalized Wednesday, 15 in critical condition with severe burns, said Fred Mullins, who directs the Augusta burn center and the North Charleston burn clinic. Some were burned on up to 85 percent of their bodies, he said.
Mullins added that the hospital burn center has a 98.7 percent survival rate.