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Cuba won’t say it, but deadly oil-tank inferno ‘probably sabotage,’ ex-Miami-Dade fire chief says | Opinion

No one in a position to know seems to be questioning, at least in public, the Cuban government’s version of what caused the deadly inferno at Cuba’s main oil storage terminal in Matanzas: a lightning strike.

But a dozen firefighters went missing at the site of the blaze — described as Cuba’s worst fire ever — and, given the Cuban regime’s history of hiding inconvenient truths, we should be evaluating independently official accounts.

So I asked fire and fuel experts to weigh in.

A recently retired Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue battalion chief with 23 years of experience fighting fires, including several flammable and combustible fuel spills, told me that he doesn’t buy the official cause.

The information released — that the fire started Friday, Aug. 5, when lightning struck a crude oil tank and spread to others, damaging four of the eight at the facility as it raged uncontrolled for five days — make it a highly suspicious fire.

“I don’t see a lighting strike having caused that fire,” said Abel Fernandez, a fire-suppression expert from Miami Lakes. “This was probably sabotage done internally.”

Why does Fernandez suspect foul play? Crude oil has a high flash point of ignition. So does diesel fuel. They aren’t highly flammable, he said. That makes lightning an unlikely source of fire, he said.

“This was crude oil being delivered. That is extremely difficult to ignite. It doesn’t release gases as a flammable liquid like gasoline or aviation fuel does,” Fernandez said.

Three conditions must exist for an inferno like Cuba’s to start, he said.

“It takes oxygen, an ignition source and the right mixture to form a combustion,” he explained. “That is called a fire tetrahedron,” a combustion triangle, the model used to probe most fires.

Crude oil inside a covered tank isn’t easily set ablaze by lightning, “but with a direct ignition source, such as flame applied to the exterior via an open pipe, I could see the tank igniting,” Fernandez said.

Addressing the possibility of a lightning strike, Fernandez said: “It would be hard to believe that they do not have arresters around that facility to prevent a direct hit on a tank, and even if they did, fire suppression systems on a fixed tank should have kept the fire contained to one unit. And what we are seeing here was the spreading of the fire by radiant heat to exposures to the other tanks on that farm.”

The suspicion that the explosion may have been a bold act by regime opponents could explain why, while U.S. experts provided some technical guidance to Cuba, the Cuban government never requested on-site assistance to put out the fire, according to the State Department.

“To me, in my opinion, this was not a lightning strike, and the reason they do not want the United States there is because we could easily prove by the seat of the fire what caused the ignition and determine what led to this fire,” Fernandez said.

But why would Cuba hide an act of sabotage they could denounce, evoking outrage against the arsonists from people already suffering through extreme hardship and now left with even less fuel, which powers Cuba’s electricity?

Blackouts are a daily reality for Cubans, who are sick of the government’s excuses and often voice their disgust to President Miguel Diaz-Canel and the first lady on social media.

“They do not want to release to the public that this may have been intentional sabotage by folks tired of the failed Communist state that they live in,” Fernandez said.

Fernandez, a Cuban American, isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theorist. In fact, he’s a card-carrying Democrat who has traveled to Cuba and supported President Obama’s engagement policy.

And, he’s not alone in his suspicion.

An experienced non-Cuban U.S. fuel engineer who works for the federal government confirmed what Fernandez said about the nature of the fire. He would only speak on background.

“It seems weird that they would say crude oil caught on fire when it has low flammability and a high flash point,” he told me. “Someone had to facilitate the ignition source. It’s likely sabotage.”

Lightning alone wouldn’t start a fire at a closed-off crude oil tank, he, too, said.

Miami and Matanzas, so close but far away

Sabotage or act of nature, Miami’s finest should’ve been there to help.

If U.S.-Cuba relations weren’t at a stalemate, Miami-Dade’s Fire Department — whose experts are routinely dispatched to countries suffering tragedies like earthquakes, would have been an hour’s flight away.

Scores of matanceros in exile — I, too, was born in Matanzas — watched videos of the raging fire and of people living nearby being evacuated. Along with fear came news that 16 firefighters disappeared. Two were reportedly found in hospitals this week, but the rest remain missing.

“The firefighters missing are incinerated,” Fernandez said. “They were dead men walking from the beginning. They had several types of fuel there. All of it, especially the crude oil, burns extremely hot, over 900 degrees.”

Horrific.

Tale of two fires

A quick response from Miami Fire Rescue, if politics on both sides weren’t driving policy reactions, could’ve made a big difference.

“We have experience from the fuel tank fire at Miami International Airport and, with our contingency of fire boats and incident command, we could have played [a role as] a valuable resource,” Fernandez said.

He’s talking about the 2011 fire at MIA that broke out at about 11 p.m. in a fuel-storage area. It was caused by a fuel leak from a valve that didn’t properly close and the fire destroyed all 14 pumps and filter vessels at the airport’s North Pump Pad. It cut MIA’s fuel capacity by 50%, but by 1 a.m., the fire had been controlled.

There were no injuries, but the captain on the scene at the time, Eric Baum, told the media: “It was a potentially disastrous fire.”

Quite the contrast to Cuba’s uncontrolled deadly fire.

That we should’ve helped, but couldn’t and didn’t makes it all the sadder.

Santiago
Santiago