Disaster threat averted

Local firefighters assisted by their French counterparts as well as other Ivoirian services looked set on Tuesday to win a five-day battle against a fire at a major fuel depot located in the Vridi industrial zone here. A senior official of the Energy Ministry told IRIN on Tuesday that the firefighting team "is attacking the fire for the last time" and that top officials of the Energy Ministry had gone to the scene of the fire at the Gestion des Stocks petrolieres de Cote d'Ivoire' (GESTOCI). In addition to local and French firemen, oil companies, the port authorities, ASECNA - the Ivoirian aviation security service - the police, gendarmes and the CIAPOL (Ivoirian anti-pollution centre) participated in the effort to combat the fire, the source said. There was no longer any risk of the fire spreading to an adjoining oil refinery, the Societe ivoirienne de raffinage (SIR), he said. The fire at GESTOCI had broken out in a storage tank on Thursday, threatening to engulf the SIR, whose flares are close to the tank. Firefighters from Paris arrived between Friday night and Saturday morning and by Saturday evening, the blaze had been declared extinguished. It reignited on Sunday, though, sending a steady column of smoke into the sky. Efforts to fight the fire were hampered by the exhaustion of local stocks of emulsifier. Up to Tuesday morning, flames still rose at least five metres above the tank. Fresh stocks of emulsifier were brought in from Paris and, by mid-afternoon on Tuesday, the smoke had cleared.