Firefighters battle to contain fuel depot blaze
MATANZAS, Cuba: Helicopters and firefighters battled Tuesday to contain a days-old blaze at a fuel depot in Cuba that has already destroyed four tanks and was threatening four more.
The fire, which started on Friday after lightning struck one of the tanks, left a 60-year-old firefighter dead and 14 colleagues missing, according to authorities.
More than 100 people were reported injured, with 22 still hospitalized.
About 5,000 people have been evacuated from around the disaster zone on the outskirts of Matanzas, an industrial city of 140,000 people some 100 kilometres west of Havana.
As teams prepared Tuesday to try and douse the fire with foam, fears were rising that the blaze could threaten the fuel supply to thermoelectric plants at a time Cuba is already battling electricity outages.
Four military helicopters flew repeated sorties over the depot, dropping sea water on the blaze.
“The firefighting teams continue to clear a path to the flames so the teams charged with applying the foam can get to the place,” Matanzas governor Mario Sabines said on Twitter.
He added that smoke from the fire had reduced visibility to near zero, and drones were deployed to provide a better view.
Four of the eight tanks on site have already collapsed in the blaze, have spilled their contents, and were still burning, according to deputy fire chief Alexander Avalos Jorge.
Water was being sprayed on the remaining four tanks, clustered just 150 metres from the other four tanks, in a bid to keep them cool.
The tanks each have a capacity of some 50,000 cubic metres or 50 million litres of fuel.