Mexico and Venezuela sent teams to help fight hell, and Cuba accepted a US offer of unspecified “technical advice” as a massive oil spill continued for the second day near the Cuban supertanker port in Matanzas on Saturday. A full fire lit up.
On Friday evening, a lightning struck one of eight storage tanks at the facility, 60 miles east of Havana. Flames reached the second tank on Saturday and the wind blew the flames dangerously close to a third.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted: “We express our deepest gratitude to the governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Chile, who have immediately offered material assistance to cope with this complex situation.”
“We also appreciate the offer of technical advice from the US,” he said.
Cuban officials said at least 121 people were injured in the second blast, of whom 36 were hospitalized, with five in critical condition. One person was listed as dead and 17 firefighters were unaccounted for. More than 1,000 civilians were evacuated from the area.
“There was a huge explosion last night around eight o’clock and the second one at five this morning was so big that it lit up the whole area like the sun,” said local resident Alfredo Gonzalez.
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Diaz-Canel visited the scene around midnight, then spent Saturday coordinating the response as a state-run television broadcast broadcast the disaster live.
Before the second explosion, Diaz-Canel posted on Twitter that first responders were “trying to stop any spread of flames and fuel” in Matanzas Bay.
As smoke rose over Havana and residents were warned to avoid acid rain, military helicopters were dumping seawater on nearby storage tanks.
Cuba is battling daily blackouts and fuel shortages. The loss of fuel and storage capacity is likely to aggravate the situation that has led to small local protests in the past few months.
George Pinon, director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Latin America and Caribbean Energy and Environment Program, said the area has eight large tanks with a capacity of 300,000 barrels.
“This area is a transshipment point for fuel for various thermo-electric plants, not just a nearby one, so this could be very bad news for the power grid,” he said.
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