Three more bodies were recovered from a huge oil depot blaze in western India, bringing the death toll to eight, an official said Saturday, as authorities waited for the fire to burn out. The fire, caused by a suspected oil pipeline leak, broke out Thursday night at the Indian Oil Corp (IOC) compound on the outskirts of Jaipur in the desert state of Rajasthan. B.L. Soni, a senior Jaipur police official, told AFP three bodies had been pulled from the plant on Saturday morning.
"Now the death toll is eight and the number of injured is 130, with two critically injured." Two employees of the IOC were missing, he added. Thick clouds of black smoke and orange flames continued to billow from the facility, but Soni said there was little fire-fighters could do but wait for the blaze to burn out. "The intensity of fire is too much" for fire-fighters to extinguish the flames, he said. IOC officials estimated the cost of the fire at up to 1.5 billion rupees (30 million dollars).
Emergency services evacuated between 1,000 and 1,500 people living within a two kilometre (1.2 mile) radius of the mostly industrial area, but some residents living farther away from the fire had started to return, said Soni. The Press Trust of India reported that Indian Oil Minister Murli Deora has ordered a probe into the accident. Local residents reported hearing a large explosion as the blaze broke out, engulfing about 50,000 kilolitres of fuel stored in tanks.
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