The names of the 16 victims of the massive explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) munitions factory in Tennessee were released by local authorities on Monday. The October 10 blast, which registered as a 1.6 on the Richter scale, was felt more than 20 miles away and completely obliterated the building where the victims were working, leaving no survivors. 

The 1,300-acre AES complex is located near the rural community near Bucksnort, Tennessee, on the Hickman and Humphreys counties line, 60 miles southwest of Nashville. In 2021, 20 area residents were killed in the Waverly Flood, one of the worst natural disasters in the state’s history.  

The victims were young and old, recent hires at AES and veteran workers, and like so many other workplace fatalities in America and around the world, they leave behind grieving spouses, children and other loved ones and friends.  

The following are some details about each of the workers based on information gathered from social media by the Country Rebel, The Tennessean and the World Socialist Web Site. The names are in alphabetical order.

1.  Jason Adams, of Waverly, had worked at Accurate Energetic Systems for 30 years, according to a 2024 Facebook post from AES celebrating employee work anniversaries. Adams just celebrated his 26th wedding anniversary with Valerie Adams on September 25. 

2.  Erick Anderson had worked at AES since June 22, 2021, according to a 2023 AES Facebook post celebrating his two-year work anniversary. A friend posted on social media, “Erick was a great uncle to my kids growing up. May he and the rest of the family’s rip.” [No photo available].

3.  Billy Baker had worked at AES since June 25, 2006, according to a 2023 AES Facebook post celebrating his 17 years with the company. He was a department manager, according to his LinkedIn page. Married for 33 years, Baker leaves behind his wife and three sons.

4.  Adam Boatman, 21, graduated from McEwen High School in 2022, was among the youngest victims of the explosion. He is survived by his twin brother, Ben, according to social media posts.

5.  Christopher “Buck” Clark began working at AES on July 2, 2020. A Facebook post from an uncle said, “he was a great guy and we loved him a lot.”

6.  Mindy Clifton took a job at the munitions plant as part of her “post-retirement” life after working a corrections facility in Florida. A friend on Facebook described her as “a big personality wrapped around a caring heart.”

7.  James Cook began working at AES on August 17, 2010, according to a 2017 Facebook post from the company. Cook’s Facebook page states he went to Big Sandy High School and lived in McEwen.

8.  Reyna Gillahan was “a hard worker who sacrificed for her family,” Gillihan’s son Marco told the Nashville TV station WSMV. Gillahan had dreamed of paying off her home and keeping it in the family, so her daughter, Rosalina Gillahan, began fundraising after the explosion.

9.  LaTeisha Mays, 26, only worked at AES for eight months. Mays’ sisters called her “the glue to our family” and “amazing.”

10. Jeremy Moore, 37, of McEwen, Tennessee, worked at Accurate Energetic Systems for 17 years. He was a father, who is being remembered as “a kind and caring man” who “made the world a better place and touched many lives and hearts around him.”

11. Melinda Rainey graduated from Hickman County High School in 1988. 

12. Melissa Stanford, 53, was a production supervisor at AES starting in September 2018, according to Stanford’s social media. She lived in McEwen, Tennessee, and attended Waverly Central High School. She was a mom, daughter, sister and aunt, a family member shared.

13. Trenton Stewart, 25, was weeks away from his wedding after proposing to his fiancé in December, according to social media posts. In addition to working production at AES, he pastored a small nondenominational church in Waverly and was a firefighter at the Waverly Department of Public Safety-Police & Fire.

14. Rachel Woodall, 28, was a production operator at Accurate Energetic Systems who only started working there just over a month ago. She graduated from McEwen High School in 2016 and leaves behind her parents, siblings and other loved ones. Woodall, or “Rayray” as she referred to herself on Facebook, said on social media, “I live in a small town, love art (drawing and painting) and scenery.”

15. Steven Wright and his wife Melinda had recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary on October 1, according to the Country Rebel page. 

16. Donald Yowell of Waverly, Tennessee, was a chemist at the plant who had worked at Accurate Energetic Systems for 30 years. He leaves behind wife Khraila Yowell and their son. 

The 16 fatalities at Accurate Energetic Systems was the largest death toll in any single workplace disaster in the United States since 2010, when 29 coal miners were killed at the Upper Branch Mine in West Virginia. Though one of the worst industrial disasters in decades, the national corporate media in the United States has all but dropped the story. Indeed, there is far more detailed coverage by the BBC than the New York Times, the Washington Post and other national news outlets. 

As the World Socialist Web Site commented Monday: 

This silence exposes the contempt of the corporate media and political establishment for the lives of workers, along with a fear that the unending carnage in the industrial slaughterhouse of American capitalism will fuel mass anger and rebellion. The media blackout coincides with the deliberate downplaying of Trump’s plans to invoke the Insurrection Act and establish military rule to crush opposition.

Accurate Energetic Systems supplies explosives and demolition charges for the US Army and major defense contractors. It has received more than $120 million in recent contracts for TNT and plastic-bonded explosives.

AES’s 1,300-acre complex has a long record of violations. In 2014, an explosion killed one worker and injured three others in a building run by Rio Ammunition. In 2019, state inspectors cited “serious” hazards after several AES employees suffered seizures for exposure to cyclonite (RDX), an explosive linked to nervous system damage. Residue was found on worktables and even in the break room, yet fines were quietly reduced to $7,200. 

One year later, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, maintenance supervisor Greg McRee stopped a fire in the same “Melt-Pour” building that has now been destroyed—using only a garden hose. He was then fired for “violating policy,” and the company ignored the unsafe conditions he reported. 

These conditions, upheld by the Democrats, Republicans and trade union bureaucracies alike, will only worsen as Trump guts whatever is left of workplace safety protections and ramps up military production for war against China and other countries.

This has been the pattern throughout American imperialism’s wars of global conquest. 

Just days after the US entered World War I, Eddystone Ammunition Works in Pennsylvania, blew up on April 10, 1917, killing 139 workers—mostly women and teenage girls—and injuring more than 100. Investigators later blamed rushed production and improper powder storage at the shell-loading plant for the explosion. 

In the runup to World War II, a blast at the Hercules Powder Company in Kenvil, New Jersey, killed 51 people, injured dozens more and devastated nearby neighborhoods on September 12, 1940. 

The deadliest of these occurred on July 17, 1944, when two ships being loaded with 4,600 tons of munitions for the Pacific war exploded in Port Chicago, California, killing 320, injuring 400 and flattening parts of the nearby town. The majority killed and injured were African American sailors. Following the disaster, 258 African American seamen refused to return to work under unsafe conditions in protest and 50 were court-martialed for mutiny. 

As military.com noted, “The explosion in Tennessee is part of a cycle the United States has repeated for more than a century. Each time national or global demand for weapons rises, production expands faster than oversight can. The risks shift from the battlefield to the factory floor. Today, as the Pentagon leans more heavily on private firms to arm both American forces and allied nations, those dangers are getting closer to home.”

The International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) is spearheading a global campaign to defend workers’ lives and halt the endless sacrifice for corporate profit and war. This means building rank-and-file committees in every factory and workplace so workers can fight for control over production and safety, shutdown unsafe operations and hold to account those responsible for workplace fatalities and injuries.