On the fourth day of the fire at the Supertanker Base in Matanzas (Cuba), the authorities, with the help of teams and specialists from Mexico and Venezuela, work to contain it. So far, some 2.800 square meters of surface are engulfed in flames and three of the eight tanks have collapsed, a fourth tank is affected by flames.
The official report and government functions point to the cause of a radio that fell on one of the tanks on Friday afternoon, with around 26 cubic meters of fuel (50% of its capacity), and that the lightning rod system did not It's enough. However, the spread of the fire, still out of control, could be due to the negligence of the regime.
Local sources confirm that this is the theory of lightning striking the tank, but that the lightning rods were not properly concealed, and the same thing happened with the fire-fighting system: “the water pump was broken and the foam pump was empty” , reported the correspondent in Matanzas of the independent media outlet Cubanet, Fabio Corchado.
Due to the lack of transparency of the Cuban authorities, most of the information is obtained through the official press, the only one that has access to the sources and the disaster area. The accredited foreign media also depends on the version of the authorities and the independent press tries to access, despite the political police, the stories of the protagonists. “There is a lot of fear, especially the relatives of the victims. They are very afraid to speak. They are receiving great pressure,” Corchado clarified.
uncertainty and fear
On Monday the authorities reported that there are fourteen and not seventeen missing as initially reported after the explosion of the second tank in the early hours of Saturday. Two of them were later found among the wounded in hospitals and one body, of a 60-year-old firefighter, has already been found.
On Tuesday, local media identified one of the disappeared, a 20-year-old who completed the Compulsory Military Service. Precisely, it is speculated that several of the missing are young people between 17 and 21 years old, the first firefighters sent to put out the fire, with insufficient materials to deal with a fire of such proportions. This, together with the uncertainty regarding the end of the incident, has warned of the discomfort among the people of Matanzas.
According to official information, so far, in the province there are 904 people evacuated in state institutions and 3.840 in the homes of relatives and friends.
In addition to the spread of the leak, there are serious health consequences to be feared from the cloud of pollutants. In a conference, the Cuban Minister of Science, Technology and Environment, Elba Rosa Pérez Montoya, confirmed that thousands of toxic particles have fallen as rain in the provinces of Havana, Matanzas and Mayabeque.
Increase power outages
As a result of the project to generate 78.000 cubic meters of fuel, the 'Antonio Guiteras' thermoelectric plant is already operating, serving a large part of the country. The electricity cuts, which have been experienced on the Island for three months due to the energy crisis, have worsened.
After almost twelve hours without power, early Tuesday morning, the inhabitants of the town of Alcides Pino, in the province of Holguín, went out to protest peacefully. In addition to the required electrical service, they shouted “down with Díaz-Canel” and “down with the dictatorship.” Independent media report that they were dissolved by the police and special troops brigades.
The difficulty of the regime in caring for the wounded has also become evident. Although the health functions claim to have all the necessary conditions, images of the precarious conditions of the hospitals transcend on social networks, in one of them a health worker was observed throwing a cardboard at a burned patient.
