A massive fire broke out at the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam on Tuesday. Several fire tenders were pressed into service to douse the flames & the fire was soon brought under control.

HPCL, in a statement said, ” A fire incident occurred in one of the crude processing units of HPCL’s Visakh Refinery today. Safety measures & firefighting was activated immediately. The fire has been extinguished.

There is no casualty & no risk to the public. Other Refinery operations are normal.”

In a statement, HPCL said the fire occurred in one of the crude distillation units.

The fire occurred in the overhead system of one of the distillation units called CDU III, which has a capacity of 3.5 million tonnes (70,000 barrels per day).

“The affected unit was safely shut down, Emergency Response Plan was activated and the fire was extinguished in a swift operation by HPCL’s Fire and Safety Department using six fire tenders,” it said.

Besides teams from HPCL, personnel from the Eastern Naval Command and the AP State Disaster Response and Fire Services Department swung into action and put out the blaze in a swift operation.