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CNN has the story:

Officials say it could take a week to extinguish a massive fire that burned Friday afternoon at a fuel storage complex in Puerto Rico, sending a thick black cloud of smoke over large parts of metro San Juan.
“I didn’t expect to see a mushroom cloud from my house,” said Justin Gehrke, who lives 4 miles from the refinery.

Eleven fuel tanks at the Caribbean Petroleum Corp. facility in the city of Bayamon, near San Juan, were ablaze, Gov. Luis Fortuno said. Firefighters were trying to cool the remaining 29 to keep them from igniting, he said.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a fire like this in Puerto Rico,” Fire Lt. Jose Atorre told CNN affiliate WLII-TV.

Fortuno said he declared a state of emergency for the area so Puerto Rico can get aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The storage and refinery complex sits on San Juan’s bay, and Fortuno said officials are working to protect it from being affected.

“We have serious worries that the bay or other bodies of water could be contaminated,” he said.

The company’s Web site says the complex has storage facilities for gasoline and gasoline-related products.

Newspaper and TV reports said a 4-inch pipe from a lagoon on the property was broken, preventing firefighters from using 2 million gallons of water from the lake to battle the blaze. About 150 area firefighters and 215 National Guard personnel were battling to keep the blaze from spreading.

Click HERE for the latest on this incident.

Thanks to forum member Luck.Runs.Out for pointing us to this in the forum.

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