Blast at German chemical plant damages nearby buildings

(Reuters) - A blast hit a northern Germany chemical plant in the city of Ritterhude late Tuesday and damaged several nearby buildings, police said. Officials did not evacuate nearby residential buildings after the explosion at around 1830 GMT, said police spokesman Marcus Neumann in the district of Osterholz. The residents in the street directly beside the burning chemical plant were advised to leave their homes for the night voluntarily as a precaution. One person working for the company called "Organo Fluid" was missing, and another person was seriously injured with third-degree burns, the spokesman said. "The injured person might be the missing employee, but at this point there is no final confirmation for that," Neumann said. The spokesman did not say if the explosion and the smoke might pose any health risk to the residents living nearby. Local media reported the firefighters did not discover any dangerous vapors in the air around the burning plant. (Reporting by Aashika Jain in Bangalore and Michael Nienaber in Germany; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)