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Matanzas (Cuba): Cuban firefighters announced Wednesday that they had “control” of a massive fire that broke out about a week ago at an oil depot in eastern Havana, killing one person and missing 14 others, according to a preliminary toll.
“It can be said that the fire is under control,” assistant fire chief Alexandre Avalos Jorge told reporters, praising the support they received from Mexico and Venezuela.
The fire broke out on Friday evening after lightning struck an oil tank in the suburb of Matanzas, a city of 140,000 people located 100 kilometers east of Havana, where the flames rose and thick clouds of smoke.
Then the area of the fire expanded to reach the other three tanks, which hold 52 million liters of fuel.
“We have become calmer,” Jorge added, noting that not all the fires were extinguished after all, due to the large quantities of oil.
A pilot who flew over the fire on Wednesday morning told state television that the fire in one of the tanks had been “almost extinguished”.
Pictures taken from the Mexican Navy plane showed that the flames in the second tank were less than in the previous days.
black smoke
However, columns of black smoke are still rising, obscuring the view, and rising from other tanks, with the level of flames receding.
“The mission was a success,” the pilot explained, referring to efforts to contain the fire and isolate it from another group of four huge tanks in the warehouse.
A Mexican navy ship pumped water from a distance of 150 meters and five helicopters hovered and sprayed water continuously, according to AFP journalists.