West of Cubaon the Matanzas city lives with anguish this Saturday due to the two oil tank fire in an industrial zone that until now has left as balance 67 injured by burns, as well as 17 missing.
What is known about those injured by the fire in Matanzas, Cuba?
According to reports from the provincial hospital “Faustino Perez“, of the 67 injured treated so far by the fire, three of them are in critical condition, while three are reported very serious and 12 serious, the rest are less serious or with minor injuries.
In the same way, Presidency also reported 17 missing, “firefighters who were in the area closest” to the fire.
What is known about fire?
The fire broke out on Friday afternoon after 7:00 p.m. local time, andThis after lightning struck one of the tanks at the super tanker baselocated on the outskirts of Matanzas, about 90 kilometers east of Havana.
- Around 5:00 a.m. this Saturday, the fire spread to a second warehouse.
For its part, Mario Sabines Lawrencegovernor of killingsreported that there are about 800 people evacuated.
When did it happen the first explosion, Yuney Hernández and her family left their house in the neighborhood of La Ganadera, about two kilometers from the fire. They returned “at around three in the morning” because the children were sleepy, explained the 32-year-old woman.
However, around 5:00 a.m., they began to hear more explosions, “it felt like pieces of the tank were falling off”, he added.
According to him Granma official newspaperthe first deposit “contained about 26 thousand cubic meters of national crude oil, about 50% of its maximum capacity, when the intensity of the lightning hit the dome of the facility.”
The country’s president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, and the prime minister, Manuel Marrero, The relief actions have been supervised since dawn, official media reported.
Meanwhile, from the upper reaches of killings the flames and an immense column of smoke that has spread in the direction of Havana. In the vicinity of the fire, several parked ambulances, water tanks and cranes ready to intervene are seen.
fault in the lightning rod system
“Apparently there was a failure in the lightning rod system, which could not withstand the energy of the electrical discharge”, Granma pointed out.
Danger Ricardo, a 37-year-old welder who works at the site, cannot explain how the tanks’ lightning rod system failed. “The thing is quite ugly, it had never been foreseen that a tank would explode there because it has a lightning rod system that it is not known how it failed”, he explained.
The two tanks supply the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plantthe largest of Cubabut pumping to that plant has not stopped, Granma reported.
The fire occurs at a time whenhe island has been experiencing difficulties since last May to meet the increased demand for energy due to the summer heat.
The obsolescence of its eight thermoelectric plants, breakages, scheduled maintenance and lack of fuel hinder power generation.
Since May, the authorities have scheduled blackouts of up to 12 hours a day in some regions of the country. DSince then there have been twenty protests in towns in the interior of the island.
Cuba currently has an average power distribution capacity of 2 thousand 500 megawattsinsufficient for the demand of households during times of maximum consumption, which reaches 2 thousand 900 megawattsaccording to official information.