a voracious fire in an oil storage tanknear the western Venezuelan city of Cabimas, was suffocated. According to local firefighters, the incident left at least 26 people injured.
In the middle of an electrical storm, lightning struck one of the tanks at La Salina, a storage yard of the state corporation Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA), on the eastern shore of Lake Maracaibo, causing the fire.
After 8 a.m. local time (1200 GMT) “on October 16, the flames were successfully extinguished almost completely,” said Mufid Houmeidan, commander of the Cabimas fire department, city close to the oil installation.
Houmeidan confirmed that the number of people injured by burns rose to 26, many of them firefighters who suffered injuries in the middle of their work to put out the fire in the tank that contained some 40,000 barrels of light crude oil.
Firefighters are still on site to prevent the flames from re-igniting.
Since the beginning of the fire, a team of firefighters and emergency response specialists, in coordination with State agencies, managed to contain it and prevent its spread, PDVSA said in a statement released on Wednesday.
“Due to the timely actions and maneuvers carried out by the technical personnel, there are no impacts to third parties and the nearby communities are out of danger,” the letter briefly added, without mentioning the number of injuries or other details.
In recent years the Venezuelan oil industry, which has the largest oil reserves in the world according to the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), has declined due to lack of maintenance and investment, as well as allegations of corruption, which has resulted in shortage of fuel and domestic gas.
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