The claim started on Friday evening when lightning hit one of the eight reservoirs of the deposit located in Matanzas, 100 km east of Havana, which contained 26,000 cubic meters of crude oil. Since the fire has spread to other tanks.
Le Monde with AFP
The fire that broke out on Friday in an oil depot in Cuba is still out of control and the authorities announced on Monday August 8 that the fire had destroyed a third reservoir and threatens a fourth. Alexander Avalos Jorge, an official in the Cuba firefighters, told journalists that “the four tanks” of 50 million liters each located in a storage base “have been compromised”. “It was a chain reaction,” he said.
The start of the fire is estimated at an impact of lightning Friday evening on one of the eight deposit tanks which contained 26,000 cubic meters of crude oil, or about 50 % of its maximum capacity. Roded by fire, the cylindrical structure exploded in the early morning on Saturday, spreading the flames to a second tank containing 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil.
Despite the fire soldiers perched on cranes and helicopters carrying out multiple water drops, this second tank in turn torn after an explosion on Sunday at midnight, forcing a rescue evacuation.
A “very complex” situation
“And what we feared happened” with the fire and the destruction of a third reservoir containing crude oil, the governor of Matanzas, Mario Sabines, said in a video published on the Twitter account on Monday Presidency, before seeing the fire spread to a fourth reservoir.
The situation is “very complex” with a “fairly large fire zone”, said the governor. Mr. Sabines declared that “teams” of rescuers from Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela “are being positioned” to spread the extinguishing foam, which “can take some time”.
According to a latest assessment, a firefighter died and the number of 16 missing was brought back to 14, while 22 people are still hospitalized, including five in critical condition. Relatives of the disappeared met President Miguel Diaz-Canel and received the assistance of doctors and psychologists.
“My son did his duty, he went” to fire, told the France-Presse agency in tears, the mother of a 19-year-old firefighter who was on the oil depot on Saturday morning when An explosion blew the first fire reservoir.
On Sunday, four planes from Mexico and Venezuela landed at the seaside resort of Varadero, 40 kilometers northeast of Matanzas, with specialists in oil fire fighting and tons of tons of extinguishing foam.