by At least 17 people were killed when a fire broke out on Friday at a fuel storage station operated by Indonesia’s state-owned energy company Pertamina in the capital Jakarta, an official with the city’s main firefighting unit said. .
The blaze, which started after 8 p.m. local time (11 a.m. ET), burned some houses and sparked panic among nearby residents in the densely populated areas, some of whom fled with their belongings, footage from the footage showed. stations.
A Pertamina spokesman said late Friday that the fire had been extinguished about two hours later.
Fire was still visible around residents’ homes after that, a fire station official said on the unit’s Instagram account.
Two of the deaths were children, while 50 people were injured, including a child, according to Rahmat Kristanto, an officer with the firefighting unit.
Most of the injured suffered burns and the government will pay for their medical treatment, Jakarta acting governor Heru Budi Hartono told reporters.
Shortly after the fire started, explosions could be heard in footage shared on social media, though Reuters was unable to authenticate the clips.
Near the storage station, residents thronged the area as firefighters loaded orange body bags from the blaze. Jakarta’s disaster mitigation agency said residents had been evacuated to nearby mosques.
Siswandi, a 21-year-old resident, said the scene “was chaotic as we were running past injured victims who were half burned, and it caused people to panic,” adding that he was taking all their valuable documents from his home. .
The call center of Jakarta’s main fire station said it had dispatched 51 units to the Plumpang area in north Jakarta, adding that the fire was huge.
Pertamina said in a statement that the cause of the incident was still being investigated and evacuation efforts were ongoing.
The company said the fuel supply for the Jakarta area remained secure as it planned to divert supplies from other terminals.
Pertamina CEO Nicke Widyawati has apologized for the fire, saying he would “reflect internally to prevent similar incidents from happening again.”
The fuel station has a capacity of more than 300,000 kiloliters, according to the country’s energy ministry.
