Puerto Rico Wing provides aerial view after massive refinery blast

 

 

Two of the Puerto Rico Wing aircrew’s aerial images after the Oct. 23 gasoline refinery explosion outside San Juan.


Maj. Edgardo Barreto
Legal Officer
Puerto Rico Wing

PUERTO RICO – A Puerto Rico Wing aircrew took to the skies to provide aerial photos after 15 fuel tanks exploded at an oil refinery early Oct. 23, rocking the entire San Juan metropolitan area with what residents first mistook for tremors from an earthquake.

The huge cloud of black smoke from the explosion at the Caribbean Petroleum Corp. plant in Bayamon rose to 20,000 feet, prompting the Federal Aviation Administration to issue a temporary flight restriction affecting commercial traffic routes and general aviation.

Within hours of the explosion and with special permission to fly into the area, 1st Lt. Frank Matias, mission pilot for the Muniz Air National Guard Squadron, and Maj. Waldemar Figueroa,  Puerto Rico Wing disaster relief officer and mission observer, teamed up to take more than 90 photos of the site.
The images were delivered to the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency.

Civil Air Patrol was the only participating agency that flew a photo reconnaissance mission in the explosion’s aftermath.