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Fire at Cuban Oil Facility Leaves Dozens Injured, Hundreds Evacuated
HAVANA — Lightning struck a crude oil storage facility on the northern coast of Cuba, igniting a fire that on Saturday had left dozens of people injured, 17 firefighters missing and prompted the evacuation of some 800 people, according to the authorities.
Images of the fire at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, in Matanzas Province, 60 miles east of Havana, the capital, were shared by the Cuban Energy Ministry on social media and show enormous flames rising from the facility, with plumes of smoke blackening the sky.
Military helicopters were seen trying to douse the inferno as dozens of firefighters rushed to the scene.
The fire began at one oil tank during a thunderstorm on Friday evening, according to state news media, and spread to a second tank early on Saturday morning. That tank was estimated to hold some 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil, or over 13 million gallons.
As of Saturday afternoon, there were no reported deaths but 77 people had been hospitalized, according to Matanzas government officials. The 17 firefighters reportedly went missing Saturday morning just as the second tank exploded around 5 a.m.
The base, which stores oil for energy production, is near one of Cuba’s primary power plants. Already, the Caribbean island struggles with widespread power blackouts as a result of chronic fuel shortages and an ailing infrastructure in dire need of maintenance.
While the lights are mostly kept on in the capital, in the Cuban provinces where nine of the country’s 11 million people live, hourslong power cuts have become a grueling part of daily life in recent months. And diesel shortages have motorists waiting in line for days.
“It’s a structural problem with Cuba’s electric power system, which has been operating for over 40 years with no scheduled capital maintenance,” said Jorge Piñon, an energy expert at the University of Texas, Austin. “That puts at risk a total collapse of the system with no short term solution.”
The country’s largest protests in decades were prompted last year in part by power outages, as well as a lack of food and medicine in the country, whose economy has been hard hit by both the pandemic and American sanctions.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba visited the affected area on Saturday along with the country’s prime minister, Manuel Marrero Cruz, touring hospitals and meeting with the wounded.
“The dawn will be long and filled with anguish, as it was last night,” Mr. Díaz-Canel said on Twitter. “There is no precedent for a fire of this magnitude at the Supertanker Base.”
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(BALTIMORE – March 14, 2023) – Founded on March 16, 1827, as a four-page, four-column standard-sized weekly, Freedom’s Journal was the first black-owned and operated newspaper in the United States, and was established the same year that slavery was abolished in New York State.
The newspaper was founded at 5 Varick Street in Lower Manhattan, New York, by Jamaican-born John Brown Russwurm, Bowdoin College’s first African American graduate and only the third Black person to graduate from an American college.
Cofounder Samuel Eli Cornish, born in Sussex County, Delaware, and a graduate of the Free African School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, also founded Shiloh Presbyterian Church, the first Black Presbyterian Church in Manhattan, in 1822.
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STEM Summer Camp Scholarships (June 2023 to August 2023) sponsored by Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity of Montgomery County, MD, and The KID Museum
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
– Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father
(WASHINGTON, D.C. – February 24, 2023) – Alpha Phi Alpha, Montgomery County chapter and KID Museum have agreed to partner in celebration of Black History Month in providing upwards of 50 scholarships to qualifying students (Grades 4-8) for STEM summer camps in Bethesda, Maryland, June 2023 – August 2023.
The McGee STEM Youth Scholarship program seeks to expand the STEM pipeline for African American youth, with a goal to provide a generous level of financial support to families that qualify and that are in need of assistance for attendance to the KID Museum summer camp.
Upon approval, families receive a $10 registration fee, instead of the usual $490 cost; participants receive a Brigadier General Charles McGee lapel pin and certificate upon completion of camp.
KID Museum provides an extraordinary experience in the Washington, D.C., Metro area, for youth and adults alike. It hails as the region’s pioneering experiential museum and educational makerspace, fostering the “Mind of a Maker” and empowering young people to be agents for change.
Alpha Phi Alpha promotes scholarship and academic excellence and its members are esteemed in such STEM fields as engineering, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, scientists, technology professionals and educators.
Applicants can apply at www.charlesmcgeestem.org. Registration is first-come, first served. And the registration date began February 1, 2023. Here is a link to the press release: https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/614678309/alpha-phi-alpha-and-kid-museum-launch-partnership-during-black-history-month-to-provide-stem-summer-camp-scholarships
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