VISAKHAPATNAM: The fire which erupted near the storage tanks of Biomax Fuels Ltd at the Duvvada Special Economic Zone in Vizag last night continued to rage late this evening and was not expected to be put down before midnight Wednesday.
Over 100 firemen and 40 fire tenders fought the fire, caused allegedly by a short circuit, all of Wednesday.
Biomax Fuels has 18 storage tanks, 12 of which are used for storing Palm Fatty Acid Distillate (PFAD) (crude form), and the remaining for storing pure form PFAD. Each storage tank has five or six motors to pump the fuel.
According to factory employees, the fire was sparked by a short in one such motor.
The joint chief inspector of factories (JCIF) of Visakhapatnam, in a preliminary report on the inferno, mentioned that some of the material, which contains methanol and bio-diesel, must have leaked from the tank, and this was ignited by a static charge, resulting in an explosion in the tank.
The fire spread to other tanks rapidly and all the crude oil stored in 12 storage tanks, (each of 3,000 KL capacity), was gutted.
There were no casualties in the fire. There are no residents close to the area. The Biomax facility has a manufacturing capacity of 5 lakh tonnes per annum from multi-feed stock, and its unit at VSEZ is one of the biggest bio-diesel plants in India.
Could It Have Been Worse?
As many as 40 fire tenders were pressed into service after the blaze lit up the sky in this port city. Within three hours of the blaze breaking out, it spread to 12 tankers and threatened to engulf the six others, which contained a purer form of the fuel. The firemen's first objective was to see that this did not happen and they began raining foam onto the inferno.
Fortunately, the fire did not spread to the other six tanks, preventing a much worse disaster.
Nearly 24 hours after the blaze was sparked, fire officer J Mohan Rao said, the danger of the other tankers catching fire was still a possibility. "Only a small distance separates the crude oil tanks and the pure oil tanks. The latter six tankers are in a line here," he added.
And There Was Methane Nearby
Another thing that worries officials is the presence of methane tanks just 200 m away from where the fuel tanks caught fire. So they started sprinkling water on the tanks and were making sure that the temperature around the methane tanks did not cross 55 degrees Celsius. "Each tank has a capacity of 1,600 tonnes of methane. We are sprinkling water on them. We expect the fire to be completely doused by late Wednesday night," said Mohan Rao.
The wind added to the woes of firemen. Thick smoke enveloped the Visakhapatnam SEZ area and some parts of Gajuwaka and the NAD junction in the city on Wednesday.
Over 10,000 litres of foam from various industries of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam was used.
What, The Hydrants Did Not Work?
Officials said safety measures at the premises were not satisfactory.
Visakhapatnam Port Trust (VPT) chief fire officer Kumar Raju said the fire hydrants on the premises did not work. "It appears that the plant had no proper captive fire control systems. I did not notice any workable hydrant systems. There was no proper drenching system that can be activated automatically in the event of a fire or even a monitoring system. The mandatory sprinklers were missing. There was no proper earthing," said Kumar Raju.
Though Biomax officials denied these allegations, question are being raised about the distance between the tanks, which was only 6 m. One officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the distance depends on the type of liquid in the tank and size of the tank. He also said that 6 m for a 3000 KL tank was below the norm.
After the Fire, the Blame Game
The Andhra Pradesh fire department officials were also critical of the Biomax Fuels fire-fighter team. "The first 15-30 minutes of a fire are crucial. If the initial response is quick and correct, then controlling a fire is not very difficult. Companies such as Biomax should have a trained team to contain a fire. We can then take over after we reach the spot. But that did not happen here. The fire was not contained quickly, and it spread rapidly," said one fire officer.
State fire officials reached the spot 40 minutes after the fire broke out and 30 minutes after they received the call. During this interval, none of the measures that ought to have been taken were taken, he said.
However, the assistant general manager (operations) of Biomax Fuels T Srinivasa Rao denied these charges and said that the company had water sprinklers, water guns, foam buckets and also a working hydrant system. "The storage tanks were set up in 2010, and we followed all the norms," he said.
Hold Your Breath: The Loss is Rs 102 Crore
Development commissioner Sobhana K S Rao said in her report said that the material available in the tanks was about 26,874 MT with a value of Rs 88 crore. The value of the tanks, pipelines and the control room is estimated to be Rs 14 crore. Three vehicles were damaged. The report said the total loss was Rs 102.27 crore. However, Srinivasa Rao said the loss would be around Rs 120 crore.