The tragedy that a puddle and a short caused
Last Tuesday, in the middle of the rains, something overflowed at the Dos Bocas refinery. They weren’t just waters. They were ‘oily waters’, a technical euphemism for a lethal mixture biding its time.
That moment came when a vehicle passed over a puddle of that liquid. A security camera captured the precise moment: the sparks from the short circuit, the sudden explosion, the fire devouring everything in its path along the perimeter fence.
The balance is heartbreaking. Five lives lost. One, from a Pemex worker. The other four, from an external company, were trapped in their vehicle when the flames reached them.
A video from a security camera has been spread through social networks where a vehicle is seen passing over a puddle… consequently, an explosion is seen.
While the video travels around the country, showing the origin of the disaster with cinematic rawness, there is a deafening silence from above. Pemex has not issued a statement regarding the released recording.
It’s not just a fire. It is the script of a repeated tragedy: risky conditions, procedures that fail and families who receive the worst news. Energy policy is written with grandiose speeches, but here, in the mud and oil of Tabasco, it is executed with fire and mourning.
Every promise of industrial safety is shattered in the face of these images. The real ‘spill’ here was not just oily water, but liability.
