Belgavi: Tankers caught sudden fire on Saturday morning, opposite to Desur railway station, 15kms away from city, while unloading petrol and diesel at the storage unit belonging to Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited (BPCL), on Saturday morning.
Combating around four hours with the flames, fire fighter teams succeeded in controlling fire and prevented probable untoward incident like blasting of wagon due to heat. However, around 1.20 lakh litres petroleum oil was spoiled out by burning in the mishap. However, no causalities have been reported. The cause of mishap is yet to come out.
Petroleum oil storage units belong to different oil companies including Indian Oil Corporation Limited, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited and BPCL are housed nearby Desur railway station, where petroleum rail tank wagons are unloaded regularly. Separate tracks have been placed here for this purpose by the railway department nearby railway station. This petroleum rail tank wagon had arrived to Desur petroleum depot on Friday evening from Mumbai. Fire caught up at 7.45am to the wagon while unloading the petrol at the storage unit of BPCL.
Fire caught-up the last but third wagon leading ejection of thick black smoke. Alerted employees immediately stopped unloading of petrol by blocking the pipeline mouth in order to avoid serious mishap and informed to fire fighters and police department. There were 30 rail linked petroleum wagons, each having capacity of 65,000 litres. The distance between wagons and storage unit was around 500 meters.
Three fire fighter teams arrived to the spot in a minimum time and tried hard for around four hours to get control on fire. Fire caught-up last but fourth wagon after one hour of catching first wagon and created more panic. The flames of fire were not coming to control to the fire fighters leading ejection of huge black smoke that covered around 1 km surrounding distance in sky. Due to uncontrollable fire, fire fighters of the airforce also sought for help.
Police department deployed police force and home guards to control the crowd trying to enter the premises out of curiosity. Additional SP B S Nyamagouda and DCP Anupam Agarwal were at the spot. Doctors and ambulance also kept ready for emergencies. Fire fighters took fire to the control at around 12pm.
Due to mishap, five trains including three express and two passengers were delayed for one to two hours. Rani Channamma Express between Bengaluru-Kolhapur delayed for two hours by arriving at 10.30am to Belagavi railway station, which supposed to come at 8.20am. It was stopped at Khanapur station. Chalukya Express between Dadar-Bengaluru departed at 11am from Belagavi which supposed to depart at 9.10am. Similarly, Garib-Nawaz Express between Bengaluru-Ajmer departed at 10.50am, which supposed to depart at 9am.
Following the incident, more than 100 truck tankers looked stopped both sides of the road between Macche to Desur, which arrived for loading petrol and diesel from storage units to supply to the petrol pumps in different areas.
