LPG depot fire traced to tank leak

The fire that hit a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) depot in Calaca town in Batangas province on Saturday started from a leak in one of its storage tanks as an official of the company that owns the facility said investigators had yet to determine what ignited it.

Ronie Badidles, business development head of South Pacific Inc. (SPI), said on Monday that only the flare headers of the affected LPG tanks continued to burn and that the flames were smaller than when the fire broke out.

Flare headers function as “safety devices” on top of the LPG tanks to burn off the gas “in a controlled manner during [an] unplanned over-pressuring of the tanks due to excessive heat from the fire,” according to an SPI statement.

The fire at the SPI facility inside the compound of Phoenix Petroterminals & Industrial Park Corp. (PPIC) was contained at 4 a.m. Sunday, about 12 hours after it started, Badidles said in a statement and in a separate telephone interview on Monday.

PPIC is a subsidiary of Phoenix Petroleum Philippines Inc., while SPI, a Filipino-owned company that imports LPG and sells it in bulk, is a locator at PPIC in Barangay Salong in Calaca.

Badidles said SPI was allowing the residual gas in the tanks “to safely and gradually burn off… until the tanks run empty.” He expected the fire to last for another day.

Four tanks, each containing about 2,000 metric tons of LPG, are in the facility, he said.

Calaca Mayor Sofronio Ona Jr. said only 13 of 47 firetrucks that responded to the alarm on Saturday remained on Monday to stop the flames.

A state of emergency in Calaca remains in effect. The local government has advised more than 1,000 people living near the PPIC compound to stay in evacuation centers until the fire is put out.

Badidles said the company “deeply apologizes” to Calaca residents for the “unease and the disturbance” caused by fire engines that responded to calls to stop the fire.

“It was an accident. No one expected it,” he said.

Classes in all levels in Barangay Salong were suspended and power supply to the village has been cut as “maximum precautions,” Ona said.

At least 20 employees were on duty on Saturday when the leak was detected in a tank. The firm’s “unofficial” finding showed that the problem could have started in the tank’s pressure relief valve, Badidles said.

He allayed fears of environmental contamination because SPI does not store any other fuel. “There was never any threat of potential ground or water contamination,” he said.

“LPG is the second-cleanest fuel after natural gas, so air pollution was never an issue during the fire. In fact, we burn the cooking gas in our homes every day,” Badidles said.

The tanks were built according to American safety standards, are set in sand and enclosed in a concrete barrier, preventing the fire from spreading to the office or to other locators in the industrial zone, the company statement said.

The only things damaged, Badidles said, were the storage facility and a truck. Employees were evacuated and only two of their first responders were taken to a hospital due to smoke inhalation.

SPI’s Batangas facility, which was built in 2014, started its commissioning stage late last year.

Raymond Zorilla, Phoenix Petroleum vice president, said that the company stopped operations at the industrial park starting Saturday, but it continued to serve its customers in other depots around the country. Maricar Cinco, Inquirer Southern Luzon, and Riza T. Olchondra in Manila