Comments
Fire broke out at Biomax Fuels Limited (BFL), a bio-diesel manufacturing unit in the Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone (VSEZ), Duvvada late on Tuesday night. No causalities were reported.
According to TA Tripathi, Director General, AP State Disaster Response and Fire Services, the fire incident occurred around 7 pm. The accident involved major bio-diesel tanks, including six tanks of 5,000 kl, 12 tanks of 2,500 kl, and two tanks of 1,000 kl each.
“Out of this, 10 tanks of 2,500 kl were completely gutted in fire while the remaining could be saved,” he said in release issued on Wednesday. The industrial unit had no fire safety systems as prescribed in the National Building Code of India, 2005. The safety distances between the storage tanks were also not maintained properly.
“Hence, fire spread from one tank to another tank easily and quickly,” he added. According to N Yuvaraj, District Collector of Visakhapatnam, nearly 40 fire fighting engines from Navy, Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, and Port Trust and fire services department were battling to put out the fire.
Damage being assessed No casualties were reported in the incident as the blaze occurred in the storage area and no worker was present in close proximity of the mishap site. Loss of property and the exact cause of fire are being ascertained.
Biomax Fuels has a manufacturing capacity of 5 lakh tonnes of bio-diesel from multi-feedstock at VSEZ. There are about 18 storage tanks and the blaze spread to 11 of them.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.