It has been more than 31 hours since a petrol tank was struck by lightning at Durban’s Engen Refinery and by 7am on Wednesday the tank was still burning. plant officials said.
”The fire seems to be very persistent,” said Engen spokesperson Herb Payne.
”We thought it would have been out by last night [Tuesday] but that was not the case. This morning fire fighters again tried putting it out with foam … and we believe the fire should be out sometime today [Wednesday],” he said.
Payne said here was only a little fuel left in the tank. Petrol and equipment worth about R120-million ”went up in smoke” on Monday at the refinery.
Willem Oosthuizen, the refinery’s general manager said on Tuesday that the fire was believed to have been caused by a lightning strike at 7pm.
The 45m-high petrol tank contained about 7,5-million litres of petrol.
The tank had been 80% full at the time of the strike and 40% of its contents had been salvaged.
The company estimated that the damaged facilities would cost between R60-million to R80-million to replace and the fuel carried a price tag of R40-million.
Oosthuizen said what had been lost was the equivalent of about a 10th of the refinery’s daily production and that the refinery held stock for 14 days.
He said there would be no disruption of the petrol supply.
By late Tuesday afternoon, large plumes of smoke could still be seen billowing into the sky but by Wednesday morning, the sky had cleared.
Refinery workers started pumping petrol out of the blazing tank early on Tuesday morning.
Earlier, refinery spokesperson Herb Payne said: ”They are trying to pump as much petrol out as possible, while allowing the remainder to burn out.”
Oosthuizen said the reason the company was sure a lightning strike had been responsible for the blaze was twofold — a refinery employee had witnessed the strike and instruments had been knocked out — indicating a high voltage jolt.
”I didn’t expect a direct strike on the floating roof. For more than 50 years this has never happened. It’s the first of its kind. We’ve had an unlikely event,” he said.
He said it was impossible to protect against a direct lightning strike.
An independent authority captured air samples and the results would be forwarded to a toxicologist to check if there was a potential health hazard.
He said he expected the results of the tests to be available next week.
A woman living near the refinery was rushed to hospital on Tuesday morning after she had breathing difficulties, paramedics said.
Netcare 911 spokesperson Chris Botha said: ”She is being taken to St Augustine’s Hospital, but we have had only one report like this so far.”
Another resident, Shamla Chetty, said her family was shocked by the incident.
”We heard a big bang. We thought the entire refinery had exploded. But the weather was also very bad,” she said. ”But there are always fires at this refinery. Now they are blaming the weather, but it’s a monthly occurrence.”
This is the second blaze in the past three months involving storage tanks in Durban.
On September 18, a number of tanks containing an assortment of chemicals went up in flames at the Island View storage depot, about 10km. One person died in that blaze. – Sapa