Cuba Evacuates 4,000 as Massive Fuel Depot Fire Rages for Third Day

Firefighters move in a truck inside the Matanzas supertanker base to douse a fire that sta
AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa
Gabrielle Reyes

Cuban authorities evacuated more than 4,000 residents over the weekend after a lightning strike allegedly sparked a fire at Cuba’s largest state oil depot in Matanzas city on Friday night, causing three oil tankers to burn and collapse as of Monday, the news website Cubanet reported.

“Previously, the fire had directly affected a tank with 26,000 m³ of domestic oil and another with approximately 50,000 m³ of imported fuel oil,” Cubanet noted on August 8 while reporting that a third oil tank at Matanzas had caught fire on the night of August 7. The third oil tank had “collapsed” by the morning of August 8, Reuters reported.

Cuba’s largest crude oil and fuel imports enter the island nation through a port in Matanzas, which is a city on Cuba’s northern coast. The ongoing fire at the Matanzas fuel depot threatens to devastate Cuba’s already weak electricity supply, which runs on a failing state grid fueled largely by “heavy crude [oil] as well as fuel oil and diesel stored in Matanzas,” according to Reuters.

“The Communist-run and heavily U.S. sanctioned country is all but bankrupt and blackouts, gas and other shortages already had created a tense situation with scattered local protests following last Summers historic unrest in July,” the news agency observed on August 8.

The fire at Matanzas began on the night of August 5. The Castro regime, which has largely neglected to maintain nearly all aspects of infrastructure on the island, claims that the fire began when a lightning strike ignited the first of three oil tankers that burned and collapsed as of August 8. The blaze has injured at least 122 people, caused 17 people to go missing, and forced the evacuation of over 4,000 Matanzas residents, according to Cuban state media.

On Monday afternoon, yet another facility appeared to explode, restoring the previously diminished cloud of fire and smoke over some of Cuba’s most profitable beach resorts. Matanzas is located about 26 miles from Varadero, one of the islands most popular beaches.

Cuba’s government asked for help in battling the Matanzas fire over the weekend from the international community. Havana specifically called on oil sector experts in “friendly countries,” i.e. nations willing to assist Cuba’s Communist regime, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

The U.S. government has offered Cuba technical assistance to quell the oil depot blaze, according to an August 8 Twitter statement by Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio.

The governments of Mexico, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Chile, Argentina, and Russia all additionally offered various types of aid to Cuba in its effort to extinguish the raging fire at Matanzas port, according to AFP. The news agency reported on August 8 that Cuban leader Miguel Diaz-Canel had thanked those nations’ governments “for their offers of help,” noting that a “support flight from Mexico arrived Saturday night.”

Jesus Perez Rodriguez, a reporter for the Madrid-based online Cuban newspaper Diario de Cuba, cast doubt on Havana’s official reason for the Matanzas oil depot fire (lightning strike) on August 7. He posited that an undisclosed alternative reason stemming from Cuban government negligence at the state-run site may have contributed to the fire’s cause.

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