At least 16 people were killed and dozens injured in a massive fire at a government fuel storage depot in the Indonesian capital on Friday, officials said.
The raging fire burned several homes, causing people to flee in panic and forced the evacuation of residential areas near a depot run by state energy firm Pertamina in North Jakarta.
Jakarta’s Fire and Rescue Department said 16 people, including two children, were killed in the blaze, while at least 50 others were injured.
Department chief Satriyadi Gunawan told AFP that many of those killed and wounded in the blaze suffered severe burns.
The cause of the fire, which started just after 8 p.m. local time (1300 GMT), was not clear.
Army chief Dudung Abdurchaman told reporters that the fire was extinguished several hours after it broke out.
He said, “The fire has already been extinguished.
Gunawan said firefighters are working to “cool down” the area after dousing the blaze.
Military chiefs Abdurchaman and Pertmina said they were investigating the cause.
“Pertamina is focused on tackling the fire and evacuating nearby workers and residents to safety,” the company said in a statement.
Nike Vidyavati, chief executive of the oil and gas firm, said it would “undertake a full internal assessment to prevent a recurrence of a similar incident.”
She said the country’s fuel supply has not been disrupted, being secured through backup supplies from the nearest available terminals.
– Second fire in years –
Heru said the Indonesian government would contribute to the treatment of the injured.
Erik Thohir, the country’s minister of state-owned enterprises, expressed his condolences to those killed and injured.
“We are all saddened by her tragedy,” he said in a statement, calling on Pertamina to thoroughly investigate the incident.
Footage aired on TV showed people screaming and running through narrow streets, with a huge blaze rising into the sky behind them.
Firefighters were also seen rushing to the scene to douse the fire as ambulance crews transported body bags to hospitals.
Gunawan said firefighters initially received a report of a pipe burst at the depot and officials worked to prevent the fire from spreading to nearby residential areas.
Jakarta’s main fire station said it had deployed 51 units and more than 250 firefighters to the Plumpang depot in North Jakarta.
The same depot caught fire in 2009 and 40 houses near the depot caught fire in 2014, but there were no casualties in either case.
In 2021 a massive fire broke out at the Balongan refinery in West Java, which is owned by state oil company Pertamina and one of Indonesia’s largest oil refineries.
The fire raged for two days and thousands of people were evacuated after a massive blaze.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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