150 firefighters in five-hour battle with Jurong Island blaze

SINGAPORE — For about five hours on Wednesday (April 20), a fire at an oil tank blazed on Jurong Island, with an intensity that led the tank to “fold and buckle”, and more than 150 Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) officers had to be deployed to the scene of the fire.

There were no casualties but one emergency responder from Jurong Aromatics Corporation (JAC) was treated for heat exhaustion.

The fire broke out at the oil tank in JAC’s large petrochemical complex at Tembusu Road, at about 3pm. TODAY understands that about 35 workers had to be evacuated from the complex.

The cause of the fire remains unclear. However, the SCDF said on its Facebook page that the blaze involved light crude oil, was “not toxic in nature”, and that the affected oil tank was contained within a 100m-by-150m bund wall.

Apart from the 150-plus personnel, the SCDF also deployed about 40 firefighting and rescue vehicles, including a 6,000-gallons-per-minute foam monitor, to control the blaze.

Several ground water monitors and fixed drencher systems were also used to cool down two nearby oil tanks.

In a Facebook post, after the fire had been put out at 7.45pm, the SCDF said that the “operation was a race against time in view of the tank that has buckled and on the need to prevent the intense fire from spreading to its immediate surroundings”.

The National Environmental Agency (NEA), which was notified of the blaze at 3.30pm, noted that the ambient air quality readings taken during the fire were within the normal range.

“The NEA  will continue to monitor the situation and will provide updates when necessary,” a spokesperson said in response to TODAY’s queries.

Jurong Island, located off the south-west coast of Singapore, is home to many companies in the petrochemical industry, such as BASF, ExxonMobil, Shell and Sumitomo Chemicals.

Some workers on Jurong Island said they were able to feel the heat from the blaze even though they were several kilometres away.

The fire and thick plumes of smoke from the JAC complex could also be seen from some western areas, such as Jurong and Tuas.

JAC has yet to comment on the fire, and attempts to reach its spokesman were unsuccessful.

According to Platts, which provides information and benchmark prices for the commodities and energy market,  JAC filed for receivership in September last year after debt-restructuring talks broke down.

The company has been offline since December 2014, just three months after it started commercial operations amid volatility in crude oil prices.

The last major blaze on Jurong Island took place on May 3, 2007, when an ExxonMobil oil refinery caught fire. Three workers died in the fire, while one was injured.

In 2011, a chemical fire ravaged the Royal Dutch Shell’s refinery on Pulau Bukom, and the SCDF needed 34 hours to extinguish the blaze.