One dead, dozens injured in Cuban fuel depot blaze

At least one person was killed and 121 others were injured after a fire triggered explosions at a fuel depot in northwestern Cuba, officials said Saturday. At least 17 firefighters remain missing.

The blaze began overnight after lightning struck a crude oil storage tank on the outskirts of the city of Matanzas, the official Cuban News Agency reported.

By Saturday morning, the flames had spread to a second storage tank and were threatening other nearby tanks.

Provincial health official Luis Armando Wong told a press conference a body had been recovered at the site.

Some 1,900 people have been evacuated from the affected area, officials said.

The Presidency of the Republic said the 17 missing people were "firefighters who were in the nearest area trying to prevent the spread.''

The presidency also tweeted that five people were critically injured with three in a very serious condition.

The injured were transferred to hospitals in the capital, Havana, around 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the storage facility.

The wounded included Energy Minister Livan Arronte.

Cuba requests for help

The Cuban government said it had asked for help from international experts in “friendly countries” with experience in the oil sector.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel expressed gratitude to the governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile for their offers to help.

The first support flights from Mexico and Venezuela were expected to arrive Saturday night.

"We also appreciate the offer of technical advice from the US," he added. The US has had sanctions against the Caribbean country for six decades.

'The sky was yellow'

Hundreds of residents were evacuated from nearby neighborhoods as plumes of black smoke filled the sky. 

"We threw ourselves out of bed; when we went out to the street, the sky was yellow," Ginelva Hernandez, 33, told AFP news agency. She was asleep with her husband and three children when the explosions happened. "The fear of people on the street is uncontrollable," she said.

President Diaz-Canel visited the scene on Saturday morning and posted on Twitter that emergency workers were "trying to avert the spread of the flames and any spill of fuel" into the Matanzas bay.

Island hit by fuel shortages, blackouts

The blaze comes as Cuba grapples with fuel shortages and daily power blackouts amid severe summer heat. Any loss of fuel at the facility, which stores oil used for electricity production, will likely make the situation worse.

Jorge Pinon, director of the Latin America and Caribbean Energy and Environment Program at the University of Texas in Austin, said the area had eight big tanks each with a capacity of 300,000 barrels.

"The area is a transshipment point for fuel to various thermoelectric plants, not just the one nearby, so this could be very bad news for the power grid," he was quoted by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Earlier this year, Cuban authorities began imposing energy blackouts lasting several hours in some regions, leading to protests in parts of the country.

nm, ss/aw (Reuters, AFP, AP)