Pink city to suffer from grey haze

The Indian Oil Corporation terminal at Sitapura continued to burn on Saturday, 55 hours (at the time of going to print) after its 11 oil storage tanks had caught fire. The fire has started spreading horizontally because the storage tanks are melting under the high temperatures.

Petroleum ministry officials estimated that the oil would burn itself out by Sunday evening after which the next round of search and rescue operations would be carried out in and around the oil terminal. The district administration recovered three more bodies from the site of the accident on Saturday morning taking the death toll to 8.

Of the 11 tanks, oil continues to burn in 5 tanks. Of the five tanks containing petrol, 4 were burnt out.

 “The fire continues to rage in three depots of diesel and one each of Petrol and Kerosene,” chief fire officer of Jaipur Ishwar Lal Jat said. The immediate concern of the rescue team is to prevent the fire from spreading horizontally. The army and the fire officers have dug up the roads around the perimeter of the IOC oil depot. “These are fire trenches. They have been dug five feet wide and are being filled with water. If there is any chance of oil spilling out of the blazing depots, these trenches will prevent them from spreading outwards,” Jat told DNA.

“We have evacuated people from a perimeter of 2 km and are keeping the residents under observation in a 5 km perimeter.  The district administration has started sprinkling water in and around the affected area to lower the temperature,” said state chief secretary T Srinivasan.