ROME (AFP) – Seven people were injured, two of them seriously, after a fire broke out at a fuel depot run by Italian energy company Eni in Tuscany yesterday, a local official said.
President of the central Tuscany region Eugenio Giani said the fire had been contained at the plant in Calenzano, near Florence.
On social media, he said seven people had been taken to nearby hospitals, two of them ‘code red’ – used to signal the most serious injuries – for burns.
Three others were classed as the intermediate code yellow – one for head trauma – and two were the lowest-risk code green.
Local residents were advised by the civil protection agency to close their doors and windows.
The fire service had put out the flames to prevent them spreading, and experts were on site to assess the potential pollution, including of nearby waterways, Giani said. He posted a video online showing a huge plume of black smoke emerging from an area of the plant.
“The fire was quickly contained and the column of smoke rose significantly due to the difference in temperature between the smoke and the atmosphere,” he said later.
In a statement, Eni confirmed that “this morning a fire broke out at the fuel deposit in Calenzano and that firefighters are working to put out the flames which are confined to the loading shelter area and do not affect the tanks in any way”.
