Rural communities hit hard by deaths from explosion at ammunition plant in Tennessee

 Photo by Jeff Kingma, Unsplash

An explosion at a rural Tennessee ammunition plant that killed 16 people on Oct. 10 has “shaken the small, tight-knit communities in Hickman and Humphreys Counties,” Ashley Ahn reported for The New York Times.

“Witnesses said the explosion was so powerful that it rattled homes at least a dozen miles away and generated a plume of smoke large enough to register on the weather radar of a Nashville television station,” Ahn wrote.

The ammunition plant, which manufactures demolition charges and explosives, is a major contributor to the economies of rural communities in Hickman and Humphreys counties.

The police and other agencies such as the FBI are still investigating the cause of the explosion.

“You want me to be honest? It’s hell,” Humphreys County Sheriff Chris Davis said in a press conference. “It’s hell on us. It’s hell on everybody involved.” 

For rural communities where everyone knows everybody, the devastation of the tragedy is personal. Many law enforcement officers who arrived at the scene of the explosion knew workers who were killed and families who were affected. 

And it hit hard for Davis, who had to give briefings to close friends and neighbors.

"It starts hitting me who these folks really are to me — it’s hard for me to hold that emotion,” Davis said in an interview with Emily Cochrane for The New York Times.