Firefighters and specialists from Mexico and Venezuela helped fight the blaze in Matanzas using boats, planes and helicopters.
Firefighters finally overcame what officials described as the worst fire in Cuba’s history which blazed for five days and destroyed 40% of the Caribbean island’s main fuel storage facility and caused huge power outages = blackout.
Matanzas is Cuba’s largest port for receiving crude oil and fuel imports. Oil and diesel stored in 10 huge tanks at the port are mainly used to generate electricity on the island.
Rolando Vecino, the transport chief of Cuba’s Interior Ministry, told state television on Tuesday afternoon that firefighters had “succeeded in bringing the blaze under control”.
Al Jazeera correspondent Ed Augustin said raging flames that engulfed a four-tank segment of the Matanzas supertanker port had died down and towering plumes of thick black smoke billowing of the harbor were now mostly grey.
“The fire finally seems under control,” said Augustin, speaking from the port of Matanzas. “You can see a huge amount of smoke coming out, but mostly the color has changed.
“For the past three days the color has been a deep soot black,” he said. “Now it’s a faint shade of gray, evidence that much of the fire has been snuffed out.”
Additional helicopters joined efforts to put out the blaze on Tuesday, along with two fireboats sent by Mexico and heavy firefighting equipment.
Later in the day, firefighters were able to enter the area for the first time and spray foam and water on the still smoldering remains of the fuel tanks.
Authorities did not say how much fuel was lost in the fire. Authorities said no oil had contaminated nearby Matanzas Bay. Yet they warned residents as far away as the capital Havana – located around 130 kilometers from the port – to wear face masks and avoid possible acid rain due to the large plume of smoke generated by the fire.
Thunderbolt
The fire started when lightning struck a fuel storage tank on Friday evening. The blaze spread to a second tank on Sunday and engulfed the area of all four tanks on Monday despite the efforts of local firefighters supported by more than 100 Mexican and Venezuelan reinforcements.
One firefighter was killed and 14 missing on Saturday when the second tank exploded, authorities said, correcting an earlier figure of 16 missing. Five other people are still in critical condition. More than 100 people were reportedly injured, 22 of whom are still hospitalized.
The huge fire was accompanied by huge explosions. Each storage tank had the capacity to hold approximately 50,000 cubic meters or 50 million liters of fuel.
The Matanzas fuel depot, built in the 1980s and modernized several times, supplies Cuba’s Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric power plant, the communist country’s largest power plant.
Cuba, which is still under heavy US sanctions, is virtually bankrupt.
Frequent blackouts and shortages of petrol and other basics had already created a tense situation on the island with scattered local protests continuing after historic unrest last summer in July.
“The problem with (electricity generation) has not been the lack of fuel, but the plants are very old and have maintenance problems,” said Jorge Pinon, a Cuban energy policy expert at the University of Texas.
“Now they will also have a lack of fuel,” Pinon said.
“If they lose Matanzas, they lose the ability to supply power plants,” he said.
