Officials said the cause of the fire was not yet clear but the facility appeared to be lacking in safety measures, including alarms.
Sources said that a huge fire broke out at an oil refinery’s asphalt storage facility in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Many other refining facilities are located near the burned facility.The incident occurred when a tanker transporting bitumen ignited while attempting to unload its cargo within one of the storage units situated within the industrial complex of the Zillion Oil Company.
Reports of injured and missing firefighters, along with burned-out fire engines, have been heard in Erbil while a refinery blaze rages, Sky News said.
Local media outlets mentioned that ten people were injured in the massive fire that broke out in the early hours of Thursday.
Fire incidents are widespread in Iraq. Last October, a fire erupted at an asphalt factory located near Arbat town in the eastern region of Sulaymaniyah in northern Iraq, resulting in the tragic death of one worker and the severe injury of three others.
The fire continued to rage for an extended period, lasting more than nine hours, primarily due to the substantial quantities of flammable materials stored within the units.A massive fire at an oil refinery in Iraqi Kurdistan raged for about 20 hours and injured at least 14 firefighters who on Thursday finally brought the blaze under control.
The fire broke out in a major crude oil tank on Wednesday night before spreading to a second refinery on a road southwest of Arbil, capital of the autonomous northern region of Kurdistan, the civil defence agency said.
The civil defence agency said the fire, the cause of which remains unclear, “started in one refinery before spreading to another”.
A spokesman for the agency, Shakhwan Saeed, told a news conference yesterday evening: “The fire has been 100 per cent contained, and there is no longer any danger for the surrounding refineries.”
He said 150 rescuers had been mobilised and 14 had been injured, with two in “critical condition”.
Arbil governor Omed Khoshnaw earlier said three rescuers were being treated in hospital for burns and another 10 suffered breathing difficulties.
The main storage tank that was impacted contained more than 5,000 tonnes of fuel, he said, putting the estimated cost of the damage caused at US$8 million.
The Arbil civil defence said four fuel tanks as well as three fire trucks were burned.
“So far, we don’t know what caused it,” said Khoshnaw, adding that it could have been an electrical short circuit.
Saeed noted that the facility did not meet “any of the standards” set by the civil defence agency for safety.
With Iraq experiencing scorching summers, the country has seen multiple fires in recent weeks, affecting shopping centres, warehouses and hospitals.
Iraq is one of the world’s biggest oil producers and crude oil sales make up 90 per cent of budget revenues.
But exports from the Kurdistan region have been halted for more than a year in a dispute over legal and technical issues.
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