PORT WENTWORTH — At first he saw the large plume of smoke rising in the air like a mushroom cloud. Then he saw a large fireball signifying a second explosion.

He checked his watch and it was 7:17 p.m. on Feb. 7 and he knew something major had occurred but he wasn’t sure. But as Sam Self turned his car in the direction of his church, just a few blocks from the Imperial Sugar Company’s massive refinery, he quickly found his answer in a surreal setting.

Joe WestburyIndex

Ted Kandler, left, and First Baptist Port Wentworth pastor Sam Self visit the memorial set up at the entrance to the Imperial Sugar Company plant near Savannah. When sugar dust ignited at the facility, the crystals instantly liquefied and caused severe burns on contact with skin.

“My first thought was that an airplane had crashed on takeoff or landing at the Savannah airport nearby,” says Self, pastor of First Baptist Church in this close-knit blue-collar community. But as he neared the church the tragedy became crystal clear.

Employees were walking out the front gates of the refinery – the nation’s second largest sugar processor – stunned, dazed, clothes shredded. Through providence, Self was one of the first on the scene of one of Georgia’s worst industrial accidents in decades. In the following days the damage would be reported on the national news broadcasts and in the nation’s major newspapers: nearly 70 injured and 12 dead from a fire that raged for days in two silos with temperatures up to 4,000 degrees.

It was the worst disaster Self had experienced since a creosote plant exploded early in his ministry when he lived in Louisiana. While it was a different product, the result was the same: a major explosion, workers critically injured, and massive burns that took innocent lives and tore families from their moorings.

And here it was again, being played out in another state hundreds of miles and decades removed from the days of his youth.

Within minutes the neighborhood was flooded with ambulances, fire trucks, police cars, and rescue equipment from first responders throughout the area. As the community rallied to help, one thing that stood out in Self’s mind was how his laity were among the first to offer themselves in ministry to the growing crisis.

When Self became pastor of the 600-resident member congregation seven years ago he began an emphasis of teaching the congregation to be “a blessing to the community.” Through a variety of ministries – but more important through personal interaction – members became sensitive to ways they could meet needs wherever they found them.

And that’s why they took the initiative to open the church to the community in the early minutes of the drama.

“Being a blessing has taken hold of our folks,” he said. “Their first thought after the explosion was how they could open the church to the community for use as it saw fit.”

That generosity resulted in the facility being designed a Stage 2 support site to give first responders a place to rest, get a meal, and talk through the grief of their experiences.

“My people did this without me. They didn’t wait for me to begin calling them, they started calling me. I saw an outpouring of ‘Who is my neighbor?’ like the Bible talks about in Luke 10.”

Carolyn Butler

Carolyn Butler, a member for 42 years, was eating supper when she heard the explosion and thought two large trucks had collided.

“It was so powerful that we heard it and felt it,” she explains.

“Several of us from the church opened the building and made coffee and got the word out that anyone could come in for a rest or get something to eat or drink. We didn’t know what to do, we just made ourselves available. We stayed through the night and finally left around 5 a.m., went home and got a couple hours sleep, and returned at 7 a.m. and started again.

“The least I felt I could do was to help someone in their need … offer them some coffee, make a sandwich, maybe not say a word but just put an arm around them.

“The thing I remember from those early days is that it was just such an overwhelming feeling of helplessness. But I felt it was important to be there. Many will never remember what we said but they will remember that we were there for them,” she adds.

If there is one thing Self says his congregation will not forget, it is “the importance of ‘today.’ Some of those employees went to work that afternoon just like they have every day for 25 or 30 years. But in one second, in a heartbeat, it was all over.

“We have learned the importance of caring for folks outside the walls of the church, of blessing them. We are pushing our folks into living out their giftedness and they are discovering how natural that is.”

Joe WestburyIndex First Baptist Church may have been the lead church in the response because it is located a scant three blocks from Ground Zero, but other Port Wentworth churches such as Bonnybridge and North Salem responded in support roles.

The backstory • Port Wentworth is a blue-collar city of 3,276 residents in northwest Chatham County. It is a bedroom community to Savannah. • The massive Imperial Sugar Refinery plant is located on a 160-acre site on the banks of the Savannah River where it processes raw sugar under the Imperial, Dixie, and Holly brands in the U.S. The plant produces nine percent of the nation’s total sugar supply. • The tragedy claimed twelve lives and has put nearly 500 employees out of work, though the company says it will continue to provide their salary for the immediate future. The accident, which destroyed two of three 80-foot silos whose contents were transformed into molten sugar, is believed to have been caused when volatile sugar dust encountered a spark.