Fire at supertanker port in Cuban city of Matanzas brought under control

The fire at the supertanker port in the Cuban city of Matanzas has been brought under control on Wednesday afternoon, diluting the danger of the fire spreading to other fuel tanks, local authorities have reported.

“The fire is under control, the flame is already no more than one meter, there is no danger of spreading, we have three confrontation fronts and we will maintain them,” the Matanzas Fire Department has reported on its Twitter account.

However, and although the danger of spreading of the fire has been diluted, the work to extinguish small outbreaks and for the cooling of the tanks still persists, as reported by the Cuban newspaper ‘Gramma’.

Also, the smoke column caused by the fire has suffered a loss of height, and is no longer visible in satellite images. The authorities of Matanzas are monitoring the air quality in the west of the island and have already ruled out any contamination of the water around the port.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel warned hours earlier that the fire caused by a lightning strike on fuel tanks in the Cuban city of Matanzas is still “dangerous” and urged the population “not to be confident”, since, as he pointed out, “there are still several days of work left”.

“My embrace and deep respect for those who are there in the fight,” the Cuban president said in a message posted on his Twitter account.

The authorities have also confirmed that the water supply and the effectiveness of the containment dikes prevent the spread of the flames to a second battery of tanks, although the first three have completely collapsed due to the fire.

The government continues to maintain the provisional death toll at one, while another 14 people remain missing and five of the 20 hospitalized patients are in critical condition.