this This Sunday, emergency crews continued their fight against the still uncontrollable serious fire at large fuel depots in Matanzas (West). Cuba)It has left one dead, 16 missing and 122 injured so far.
A massive pillar of thick black smoke and flames several meters high continues to envelop the Matanzas Super Tanker Base, where the fire started this Friday due to an electrical discharge.
The Cuban Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) stated in its latest report: was a 60-year-old firefighter from the late city of Cienfuegos who participated in the extinction efforts.
also added this Most of the 122 injured were discharged.although five are in critical condition, three are in critical condition and 16 are receiving treatment.
The 16 missing are firefighters who were surprised when the second tank exploded while working on the frontline to stop the fire in the first tank.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who went to Matanzas on the same Friday, met with the relatives of the missing and made an offer to them. “all support”.
To the extent that the fire can be extinguished, “start looking for the lost”.
At dawn, expert teams from Mexico and Venezuela joined the fight against the fire.
The Mexican team that first arrived at the scene included 60 military personnel and 16 technical experts fighting industrial fires of state oil company Pemex.
Thirty-five experts from the national oil company PDVSA and 20 tons of materials such as firefighting foam came from Venezuela.
Diaz-Canel thanked the international response to an unprecedented fire in Cuba.
Eight tanks of 50,000 cubic meters
flames so far affected only two of the eight deposits of these facilities.At 50,000 cubic meters each, some were intended for the nearby Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power station, one of the largest in the country. However, the risk of spread remains.
According to the latest information, fire andchecked at the first deposit affectedThere is still a lot of white smoke coming out of it, and the second time after the upper deck collapsed in the afternoon, the fuel inside was still burning magnificently.
firefighters work too cooling a nearby tank with seawater to prevent it from exploding. A helicopter was also used for these missions.
In parallel, fuel is extracted from the other five large tanks at these facilities using tankers and a cabotage ship.
Given the hidden risk, security forces evacuated about 4,000 people from the nearest neighborhoods. Some stayed in temporary shelters, such as those set up at Matanzas University; others preferred to go to relatives’ homes.
“We didn’t know if the candle would reach us. You could feel the heat and we didn’t realize what it was until we saw the webs.”, describes 16-year-old kitchen assistant Efe Christian, who lives in the Dubrocq neighborhood in the Matanzas region closest to the event.
His neighbor Prima Felicia Alfonso, who had not eaten for two days because of his nerves, remembers that he was still afraid: “This surprised us, we were so scared! We close everything, close and go down to the small park. My grandson picked us up and drove us to Cumbre (a neighborhood far from Matanzas).”
energy crisis
Cuban Government has not yet made public estimates of economic damage It was caused by this event that affected the country at a sensitive moment.
Cuba has now been going through an energy crisis that has been worsening for weeks, due to a combination of technical failures in its thermoelectric power plants (responsible for two-thirds of production) and a lack of fuel.
There were power cuts in the country almost every day.Power outages were recorded on 29 of the 31 days in July. The Antonio Guiteras plant in Matanzas has only 24 hours of fuel left due to this incident.
According to initial hypotheses, the fire broke out around 19:00 local time (23:00 GMT) on Friday, when lightning struck the bottom of the fuel puddles and exceeded the lightning rod system’s capabilities.
That same afternoon, the first tank exploded with about 25,000 cubic meters of oil, and around 7:00 am local time (11:00 GMT), the second was ignited with an unspecified amount of fuel.
call him They rose tens of metersIt painted the skies of nearby Matanzas red, and a massive column of black smoke reached Havana, more than 100 kilometers away.
Source: Informacion
