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By Mariela Nava and Mircely Guanipa
MARACAIBO (Reuters) -At least 21 people including workers, neighbors and firefighters were injured on Tuesday in a fire at a crude storage tank in Venezuela's La Salina oil terminal, operated by state company PDVSA, authorities said.
The fire broke out early in the day during a storm and has been raging through the evening. The facility, which PDVSA uses mostly for moving crude and fuel between domestic ports, is located near the western city of Cabimas on the shore of Lake Maracaibo.
"Many people were exposed to high temperatures. We have counted 21 injured so far, all of them with minor lesions," the chief of the Cabimas' firefighters, Mufid Houmeidan, told Reuters, adding that the number could increase.
PDVSA did not reply to a request for comment.
Fires, power outages and other incidents are common at PDVSA's facilities due to the deterioration of oil production sites, refineries, terminals, pipelines and vessels. They frequently disrupt operations.
Firefighters from Cabimas said earlier on Tuesday they were working to control and smother the balls of fire, which were leaving a tall plume of black smoke.
The firefighters were running out of the foam needed to extinguish this type of oil-related fires, Houmeidan was quoted as saying by local media.
The tank had about 75,000 barrels of oil when the fire broke out at the terminal's storage patio, Houmeidan said in a video early on Tuesday, adding that nearby communities would not need to be evacuated.
The tank's structure was seen collapsing in several videos, as people were standing close to it. An explosion was heard by neighbors later, a source close to operations said, followed by a taller column of fire.
"There was a boil over," another source said. "That's what you see in the videos."
Injured people were taken to a PDVSA hospital in the area, according to the sources.
The nearby Bajo Grande terminal, used by PDVSA and U.S. producer Chevron to export crude and fuel, was unaffected by the incident, sources close to operations said.
(Reporting by Mircely Guanipa, Mariela Nava, Tibisay Romero and Deisy Buitrago; Writing by Marianna Parraga; Editing by Sandra Maler)
