HA­VANA (AP) — A dead­ly fire that be­gan at a large oil stor­age fa­cil­i­ty in west­ern Cu­ba spread Mon­day af­ter flames en­veloped a third tank that fire­fight­ers had tried to cool as they strug­gle to fight the mas­sive blaze.

At least one per­son has died and 125 are in­jured, with dozens of fire­fight­ers re­port­ed miss­ing ever since light­ing struck one of the fa­cil­i­ty’s eight tanks on Fri­day night. A sec­ond tank caught fire on Sat­ur­day, trig­ger­ing sev­er­al ex­plo­sions.

“The risk we had an­nounced hap­pened, and the blaze of the sec­ond tank com­pro­mised the third one,” said Mario Sabines, gov­er­nor of the west­ern province of Matan­zas where the fa­cil­i­ty is lo­cat­ed.

Fire­fight­ers had sprayed wa­ter on the re­main­ing tanks over the week­end to cool them and try to stop the fire from spread­ing.

The gov­ern­ments of Mex­i­co and Venezuela have sent spe­cial teams to help ex­tin­guish the fire, with wa­ter can­nons, planes and he­li­copters fight­ing the fire from sev­er­al di­rec­tions as mil­i­tary con­struc­tions spe­cial­ists erect­ed bar­ri­ers to con­tain oil spills. Lo­cal of­fi­cials warned res­i­dents to use face masks or stay in­doors giv­en the bil­low­ing smoke en­velop­ing the re­gion that can be seen from the cap­i­tal of Ha­vana, lo­cat­ed more than 65 miles (100 kilo­me­ters) away. Of­fi­cials have warned that the cloud con­tains sul­fur diox­ide, ni­tro­gen ox­ide, car­bon monox­ide and oth­er poi­so­nous sub­stances.

The ma­jor­i­ty of those in­jured were treat­ed for burns and smoke in­hala­tion, and five of them re­main in crit­i­cal con­di­tion. A to­tal of 24 re­main hos­pi­tal­ized. Over the week­end, au­thor­i­ties found the body of one fire­fight­er as rel­a­tives of those still miss­ing gath­ered at a ho­tel to await news about their loved ones.

Sabines and Cuban Pres­i­dent Miguel Díaz-Canel said it was im­pos­si­ble to search for the miss­ing fire­fight­ers giv­en the roil­ing tem­per­a­tures.

The blaze at the Matan­zas Su­per­tanker Base in Matan­zas city prompt­ed of­fi­cials to evac­u­ate more than 4,900 peo­ple, most of them from the near­by Dubrocq neigh­bor­hood. The fa­cil­i­ty’s eight huge tanks hold oil used to gen­er­ate elec­tric­i­ty, al­though it wasn’t clear how much fu­el has been lost as a re­sult of the flames. The first tank that caught fire was at 50% ca­pac­i­ty and con­tained near­ly 883,000 cu­bic feet (25,000 cu­bic me­ters) of fu­el.

The blaze comes as Cu­ba strug­gles through a deep eco­nom­ic cri­sis and faces fre­quent pow­er out­ages amid a swel­ter­ing sum­mer. Of­fi­cials have not pro­vid­ed a pre­lim­i­nary es­ti­mate of dam­ages.

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An­drea Ro­dríguez on Twit­ter: www.twit­ter.com/AR­o­driguezAP

Source: Ass­coiat­ed Press