Colossal explosions after lightning hits fuel depot sparking chain of blasts
This is the moment a catastrophic explosion sent a mushroom-cloud-style ball of fire high into the sky in Cuba.
A firefighter is dead and 16 others are missing after three tanks at a fuel depot exploded.
The massive blasts were caught on camera, after a lightning strike sparked a major disaster in the island nation on Friday.
Helicopters were scrambled on Monday in the latest effort to contain the five-day-old blaze that since spread to a third tank at the site in Matanzas, 60 miles (100km) east of the capital Havana.
Now there are fears that a fourth of the eight tanks could also be compromised, with a chain reaction blamed for blowing up the second and third.
More than 100 people have so far been injured, mostly with burns, with another 24 in hospital, five in a critical condition, an official update said. The dead fireman was 60-years-old.
Some 5,000 people have been evacuated from around the disaster zone, according to Cuban authorities.
The country issued a plea for help from ‘friendly countries’ and specialist equipment including aircraft, firefighters and other aid has arrived from Mexico and Venezuela.
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Health officials are monitoring air quality, and advised at-risk people to wear masks in smoke-affected areas and to avoid being out in the rain.
The inferno on the outskirts of Matanzas, a city of 140,000 people, initially broke out late on Friday evening after lightning struck one of the tanks.
That then spread to the second tank by the early hours of Saturday, causing another colossal explosion.
The first two tanks collapsed overnight on Sunday, spilling their oil.
The governor of the western Matanzas province, Mario Sabines, told state TV: ‘The third tank also collapsed, after the second spilled its fuel’.
He described the containment effort as ‘very complex’, and the size of the blaze area as ‘very big’.
Mr Sabines said the teams were preparing an operation to douse the flames with foam, ‘but this could take a while.’
Deputy fire chief Alexander Avalos Jorge added later on Monday that as a result of that collapse, a fourth tank has also been affected.
‘It’s been a chain reaction’, he explained.
The Cuban Presidency tweeted yesterday that it would be a ‘decisive day’ in efforts to contain the blaze, adding: ‘Work is intensifying to combat the fire’.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel met family members of the missing firefighters on Sunday at a hotel in Matanzas, where they were given access to doctors and psychologists.
‘My son was doing his duty, he stepped forward,’ said the distraught mother of one 19-year-old fireman who was at the depot when the second fuel tank caught fire.
After the first tank caught fire late Friday, the blaze spread to a second tank by the early hours of Saturday.
According to the Cupet state oil company, the first tank had contained about 26,000 cubic meters of crude oil, about half its capacity.
The second contained 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil.
It was not immediately clear how full the third tank – also with a capacity of 52,000 cubic meters – was when it caught fire.
Firefighters had been battling to prevent it from catching fire – dousing it with water to keep it cool, but their efforts could not prevent the blast.
The disaster comes at a time when the island – which has an outdated energy network and persistent fuel shortages – is facing mounting energy difficulties.
Since May, the authorities in some regions have imposed energy blackouts of up to 12 hours – sparking protests around the nation of 11 million people.
The depot, built in the 1980s but modernized several times, supplies the nation’s largest thermoelectric plant.
The plant features five docks which can take in ships of up to 180,000 tonnes, according to the Granma official newspaper.
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