After an explosion at a steel plant near Pittsburgh killed two and injured several others, investigators have shifted from a search-and-rescue operation to determining the cause of the blast.
All those present at the U.S. Steel Clairton Coke Works plant in Clairton, Pennsylvania, about 15 miles outside Pittsburgh, had been accounted for by the evening of Aug. 11, officials said. Two people were killed, 10 were treated for injuries in a hospital and many others were treated on the scene for more minor injures. Five of the 10 hospitalized were in "critical but stable" condition, Allegheny County Emergency Services Chief Matt Brown told reporters in an evening update.
Authorities have not yet indicated what could have caused the explosion, which was followed by other smaller explosions the morning of Aug. 11. In the hours afterward, all efforts were focused on finding the missing. The next phase in the investigation will include interviewing employees and flying in experts, officials said.
"It does bring our incident from an emergency standpoint to a close, it certainly doesn't close the incident as a whole," Brown said. "There's lots to be investigated."
Contributing: Melina Khan, Jorge L. Ortiz, Phaedra Trethan, Matthew Rink and Marc Ramirez, USA TODAY
