MIAMI, United States.- In the midst of efforts to try to extinguish the fire that has consumed two fuel tanks at the Matanzas Supertanker Base since Friday, the state company Union Cuba Petróleo (CUPET) reported that this Sunday a truck transporting gasoline in the Via Blanca had an accident.
According to CUPET, the accident occurred in the morning hours of this Sunday, August 7, and involved a rigid tanker truck, license plate B231121, belonging to the TRANSCUPET company. The equipment was transporting solvent naphtha for industrial use, official media said.
The accident, which caused no loss of human life, took place on the Vía Blanca, near the Canasí bridge.
As part of a special coverage of the fire in Matanzas, caused after lightning struck tank 52 of the Supertanker Base on Friday night, the Governor of Matanzas, Mario Sabines Lorenzo, was interviewed on national television about the CUPET truck accident.
“The truck driver is safe, but he has nothing to do with what is being done here in the province,” the official said.
So far in the city of Matanzas there are more than 4,000 people evacuated due to the fire, still out of control this Sunday.
The fire left 122 people injured. At the time of writing this note, the MINSAP had reported that 24 injured are still hospitalized, 16 of them in care, five in critical condition and three in serious condition. Also, 16 firefighters remain missing and a person has already been identified as the first fatality of the incident: Juan Carlos Santana Garrido, who had been reported among the missing.
Santana Garrido remained for 15 years in the Special Fire Protection Command of the Camilo Cienfuegos Refinery, adds the notification of the state media.
According to official Cuban media, to help the island’s government manage the fire, teams from Mexico and Venezuela arrived in Cuba on Saturday night.
The two flights from Mexico transported 82 Mexicans, including 60 military personnel and 16 specialist technicians from Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), who traveled at the request of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in addition to equipment and chemical products.
For its part, Conviasa flight A 340-642, from Venezuela, arrived with 35 firefighters, specialists and technicians from Petróleos de Venezuela, SA (PDVSA). They are men “of the most qualified in this type of disaster,” the Venezuelan regime’s People’s Power Minister for Oil, Tareck El Aissami, said on Twitter.
The Cuban regime had asked on Saturday for international help and advice from “friendly countries” that had experience in oil.
So far, the authorities of the Cuban regime assure that a third tank has not been damaged by the fire, and that work continues at the Supertanker Base.
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