Cuba asked for help on Saturday to hold a large fire in the fuel depot that had killed at least one person, 121 people were injured and 17 firefighters were missing.
Around 1,900 people have been evacuated from affected areas, according to officials from West Matanzas Province, where lightning hit the fuel tank Friday night, triggered an explosion.
Provincial Health Officer Luis Armando Wong told a press conference on Saturday night that the first corpse had been found at that location.
Five people were seriously injured, according to the renewal by the Cuban president on Twitter, with three others in a very serious condition in the hospital.
The injured including the Minister of Energy Livan Arronte.
The President’s Office said 17 firefighters were missing, those who were “closest” with fires in the Matanzas industry zone, a city about 100 kilometers (62 miles) to the east of Havana.
“Cuba asks for help and suggestions from friendly countries with experience in fuel” to help extinguish the fire, the president is added to a statement.
Then on that day, President Miguel Diaz-Canel thanked the governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chili, “which immediately offers material assistance.”
“We also appreciate the offer of technical advice from the US,” he added.
The US Embassy in Havana said on Twitter: “We want to explain that US law gives US entities and organizations to provide assistance and disaster responses in Cuba.”
The United States has sanctions on the communist state of one party for six decades.
‘The sky was yellow’
The fire broke out after the lightning bolt hit a tank on Friday at the depot on the outskirts of Matanzas, a city of 140,000 people.
In early Saturday, the fire had spread to the second tank, causing another explosion and sent a large black smoke lump to the sky.
The helicopter worked hard against the flames on Saturday, with ambulances, water tanks and cranes at the scene.
Firefighters who were exhausted gathered at the factory, waiting to enter to find their friends who seemed to be unable to escape from the second explosion.
“We felt the explosion, like a shock wave that pushed you back,” Laura Martinez, a resident of La Ganadera, near the disaster zone, to AFP.
After hearing the first explosion, 32-year-old Yuney Hernandez and his children escaped their home only two kilometers from the depot. They returned a few hours later.
Then, they heard more explosions in the early morning, “like a falling tank,” he said.
Ginelva Hernandez, 33, said she, her husband and three children fell asleep when the explosion was heard.
“We threw ourselves from bed; when we went to the road, the sky was yellow,” he told AFP. “The fear of people on the road is out of control,” he added.
‘Could take time’
Diaz-Canel said extinguishing the flames “could take time,” While Asbel Leal, Director of Cupet State Oil Company, said the country had never experienced a fire “as big as we have today.”
According to Cupet, the first tank contains about 26,000 cubic meters of raw, about half of its capacity, when struck by lightning.
The second contains 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil.
The official Granma newspaper reported that the fire was likely caused by “errors in the lightning system, which could not withstand energy from electricity release.”
The depot supplying the thermoelectric factory Antonio Guiteras, the largest in Cuba, but the service for the factory has not been disrupted, the official said.
Disasters came at the time of the island – with an outdated energy network and a lack of persistent fuel – had faced difficulties in the installation in meeting the increase in energy demands in a severe summer heat.
Since May, the authorities have enforced energy blackouts up to 12 hours a day in several regions of at least 20 protests around Portugal-sized countries consisting of 11 million people.
