A third crude oil tank caught fire on Monday at Cuba’s main storage terminal, said the governor of Matanzas province, while a fourth tank is at risk although so far it has not been caught by the flames.
Huge columns of fire and black smoke spread to the western part of the island, including Havana, darkening the sky throughout the day. Explosions rocked the area before midnight Sunday when a tank collapsed.
This is what we know about the fire that is now three days old.
When did the fire start?
The fire broke out around 7:00 p.m. local time (6:00 p.m. Mexico City time) on Friday, according to the first hypotheses, when lightning struck the base of fuel deposits and exceeded the capabilities of the lightning rod system.
That same afternoon, the first tank exploded, with some 25,000 cubic meters of oil, and at around 7:00 local time (6:00 Mexico City time) the second ignited, with an undetermined amount of fuel.
According to the state-owned Cubapetróleos, the first fire tank contained some 26 million liters of crude oil, 50% of its capacity. The second, which exploded at midnight on Sunday, had 52 million liters of fuel oil.
The flames have risen several tens of meters, dyeing the sky of nearby Matanzas red, and the huge column of black smoke has reached Havana, more than 100 kilometers away.
How has the fire been fought?
According to official media reports, the efforts of the Cuban and international emergency teams to contain the flames in the first two warehouses affected have not been successful. The infrastructure has a total of eight deposits of 50,000 cubic meters each.
The flames have reached the third tank, which had been cooled with seawater for much of this Sunday, almost at the same time that the second affected tank collapsed due to the fire.
Shortly before, the emergency teams had withdrawn from the area of the incident after a strong wind prevented their work and fanned the flames.
Sabines compared the situation to an “Olympic torch” going from one tank to another, turning each one into a “fire pit” and now encompassing the area covered by all three tanks, with flames and black smoke making the situation “very complex”.
Several flights from Mexico and Venezuela with experts, firefighters, equipment and supplies from their oil companies Pemex and PDVSA have arrived on the island since Saturday night to collaborate.
Sabines said crews were preparing an operation to attack the flames with foam, but this “may take a while.”
“The work intensifies to fight a fire that does not give in. Another decisive day,” the Cuban Presidency said on Twitter on Monday.
Who have been the victims?
The Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) indicated in its latest report that the fire has so far left one dead and 122 injured, five of them in critical condition, three serious and 16 receiving care (the rest have been discharged). ).
The missing are mainly firefighters who were surprised by the explosion of the second tank when they were working on the front line to stop the fire in the first. The recovery of the bodies will not begin until the flames are extinguished, the Cuban government explained.
In addition, some 5,000 people have been evicted from Matanzas neighborhood housing located in the vicinity of the industrial park.
Why is the Matanzas deposit important?
In Matanzas, about 130 kilometers to the east of the island, is located the main oil terminal in Cuba and its largest port to receive crude oil and imported fuels.
Cuban heavy crude, as well as fuel oil and diesel stored in Matanzas, are mainly used to generate electricity on the island.
An oil tanker carrying Russian crude to Matanzas, identified by Refinitiv’s Eikon monitoring service, is unlikely to be able to unload next week even if the docks are not affected by the fire, due to possible damage to tanks, pipes and valves. , according to analysts.
As Matanzas is the only terminal with the capacity to receive large ships, the ship could be forced to transfer its cargo through ship-to-ship operations so that the crude can be refined in Cienfuegos or Havana, said Jorge Piñon, director of Energy and Environment of Latin America and the Caribbean from the University of Texas.
“But it is not clear that Cuba has the capacity to do that,” he added.
With information from AFP, EFE and Reuters
