Death toll rises to 10 as India oil depot fire rages on

Nov 1, 2009, 8:52 GMT

New Delhi - The death toll rose to 10 as a huge fire at an oil depot near India's northern city of Jaipur raged on Sunday, almost three days after it broke out, news reports said.

The blaze at the state-run Indian Oil Corp (IOC) depot on the outskirts of Jaipur started Thursday evening and engulfed at least 11 tanks containing 8 million litres of oil.

At least 150 employees and residents were injured while 500,000 people had to be evacuated from the area.

A charred body was spotted near one of the blazing tanks early Sunday, bringing to 10 the number of people killed. Senior police officer BL Soni told the PTI news agency the body could not be reached because of the heat. Four IOC staffers were still missing.

The fire had died out in six tanks while it continued to blaze in five tanks, chief fire officer Ishwar Lal Jat told reporters.

Flames were still leaping from the burning tanks while black smoke was emanating from others.

The IOC said there was no option but to let the petroleum stock burn off and the blaze to die out as it was too dangerous for firefighters to approach the site.

Jat said it could take one more day for the fire to burn itself out.

The inferno had lessened in intensity - the fire was about 5 metres, subsiding from its earlier height of about 15 metres but was spreading horizontally.

The blaze had spread to an adjacent factory but military and civilian authorities managed to douse it on time.

State officials said 34 injured were being treated at hospitals while many people were moved to temporary shelters.

People living in the vicinity of the depot were complaining of difficulty breathing and itchy eyes.

'Since Friday night I have been having problems in breathing ... I complained to my doctor and he told me it is because of smoke in the air,' a local Adesh Kumar told the IANS news agency.

Officials have estimated the losses at up to 10 billion rupees (about 200 million dollars).

Besides burning fuel worth 5 billion rupees, the fire caused damage to hundreds of shops and factories in the industrial area estimated at another 5 billion rupees.

India's federal Petroleum Ministry has ordered an inquiry to ascertain the cause of the fire but preliminary investigations showed that a leak in a pipeline might have caused the conflagration.