HAVANA — A fire sparked by lightning at an oil storage facility raged through the city of Matanzas on Saturday, where four explosions and flames injured nearly 80 people and left 17 firefighters missing, Cuban authorities said.
Firefighters and other specialists were still trying to put out the blaze at the supertanker base in Matanzas, where the blaze broke out during a thunderstorm on Friday evening, the Ministry of Energy and Mines tweeted. . The government later said it had sought help from international experts in “friendly countries” with experience in the oil sector.
Cuba’s official news agency said lightning struck a tank, starting a fire, and the fire then spread to a second tank. As military helicopters hovered over the blaze, a dense column of black smoke billowed from the facility and stretched more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) west towards Havana.
The Matanzas provincial government’s Facebook page said the number of injured had reached 77, while 17 people were missing. The Presidency of the Republic said the 17 were “firefighters who were in the nearest area to try to prevent the spread”.
The crash comes as Cuba grapples with fuel shortages. It was not immediately clear how much oil had burned or was at risk at the storage facility, which has eight giant tanks containing oil used to fuel power plants.
“I was in the gymnasium when I felt the first explosion. A column of smoke and a terrible fire rose into the skies,” Adiel Gonzalez told The Associated Press by phone. “The city has a strong smell of sulphur.”
Authorities said the Dubrocq neighborhood closest to the fire had been evacuated, while Gonzalez added that some people had decided to leave the Versailles neighborhood, which is a little further from the tankyard.
Scores of ambulances, police and fire engines were seen on the streets of Matanzas, a city of about 140,000 people located on Matnzas Bay.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel visited the scene of the fire early Saturday, officials said.
Local meteorologist Elier Pila showed satellite images of the area with a dense plume of black smoke moving west from the point of the fire and reaching as far east as Havana.
“This plume can be nearly 150 kilometers long,” Pila wrote on his Twitter account.
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Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP