Few photographers dared to get close to the explosive fire that raged on for two weeks at an oil depot near Tripoli’s airport.Forty-one-year-old Akram al-Maqari however didn’t think twice about reaching for his camera.

Al-Maqari works in the field of environmental awareness and safety at the National Oil Corporation (NOC); he is acutely aware of the meaning of a fire outbreak in fuel tanks storing millions of liters of gasoline, diesel and kerosene.

Since al-Maqari had official access to the site, he was able to capture powerful and frightening images of the blaze.

Few photographers dared to get close to the explosive fire that raged on for two weeks at an oil depot near Tripoli’s airport.Forty-one-year-old Akram al-Maqari however didn’t think twice about reaching for his camera.

Al-Maqari works in the field of environmental awareness and safety at the National Oil Corporation (NOC); he is acutely aware of the meaning of a fire outbreak in fuel tanks storing millions of liters of gasoline, diesel and kerosene.

Since al-Maqari had official access to the site, he was able to capture powerful and frightening images of the blaze.

Akram al-Maqari, how did you learn about the fire and what was your first reaction?

I was listening to the news about the war in Tripoli and I heard the sounds of rockets and missiles. The sound of sirens drew my attention and I felt like something even more dangerous and serious was going on.  I climbed the stairs to the roof of my house to see what was happening and I saw the flames and columns of smoke rising from the fuel tanks of Tripoli, which are only a few kilometers away.

I could not believe my eyes. I came down, took my camera, and drove my car towards the depot. My heart was beating too fast as I was driving because I kept on thinking about the big environmental disaster awaiting the country, ‘May God forbid, if all these oil tanks, which are full with fuel, burn’, I thought. 

There are eighteen tanks; each contains no less than thirteen million liters of fuel and oil derivatives. A huge amount of smoke will be produced and toxic gases  will be emitted, this is of course apart from the humanitarian disaster that may occur as a result of the explosion of the six liquefied gas tanks which contain hundreds of thousands tons of gas.

I was thinking of the size of the human disaster and the number of people who would be killed and injured as well as the houses that would be destroyed as a result of the explosion.  I was also thinking of the amounts of money that would be wasted and eaten up by the fire. I asked myself how these fools could tamper with the fate of human lives in Libya, the peoples’ money and their resources!

Can you describe the moment you arrived to the site of the fire ?

The moment I arrived to the fire site, the scene of the flames rising up tens of meters high and with heat reaching far distances made me stop for a moment—I started to think and ask myself where I should start.

I found myself suddenly responsible for a task of such a big size and within minutes, I found some of my colleagues and the firefighting teams coming to the site with their fire extinguishing trucks. We collectively started our work, which lasted for one full week, in a very organized manner and without any time to be wasted except for the few sleeping hours to be able to finish our work.

Were you able to take pictures of all your observations during the fire extinguishing process?

No matter the amounts of pictures taken, I could never document what I saw.  I saw strong men suffering and sacrificing their lives to extinguish the fire and I wish I could document every detail to let the Libyan people and the whole world see the size of the disaster and tragedy that was brought on us by the combatants, who are blinded by their own interests and their desperate quest for power and for controlling the country’s resources. 

I wanted to show the Libyans how these people are wasting and burning oil worth tens of millions of dollars, not to mention the tanks, equipment, machinery and the fire extinguishing materials. I wanted history to remember all this. 

Since the first moment I knew about the fire in the oil depot, I carried my camera with me to document this although I was very busy with the team in administrating teamwork and in contributing to the extinguishing of the fire.  However, every now and then, and especially during my breaks, I took some pictures.

Nonetheless, I haven’t been able to take photos of many of the important events, heroic stances and fire balls because I was either busy or because the camera was not with me. In the end, I discovered that I took hundreds of photos. 

How many people worked together to put out the fire?

I was told by the  Public Authority for Safety and the National Oil Corporation that the number of those who participated in the fire extinguishing efforts since the start of the fire and over one week time was around 400 hundred or more from the different age groups and from the different Libyan cities.

Some of them were employees of oil companies and specialized in firefighting, and some of them were employees of the General Authority for Safety and civil defense and fire extinguishing employees.  There were also Libyan citizens who volunteered to help and who did minor jobs such as the distribution of drinking water to those who were putting out the fire and who in the end found themselves helping in the actual fire extinguishing efforts. 

Did ordinary people volunteer and help in the fire extinguishing efforts?

Those who were not assigned to do so were not allowed to come near the site of the fire.  However, in some cases, some regular people were able to take part in this process. For example, I saw a young man begging to be allowed to participate in the firefighting efforts.  This young man was studying at the engineering college in Benghazi, which was destroyed by the Islamist militants a while ago. 

When this crisis started, he came to our premises and begged us to allow him to participate, but he was advised to go back to his house because he does not have the needed experience and because of the huge danger of being in the site without having the needed training. 

The young man did not abandon his dream.  He came to the oil depot through the airport road via taxi under very tense conditions and started to beg and ask the guard at the gate to let him help, even in the collection of waste and garbage. He was finally able to enter the site and he was very courageous. He helped many firefighters, collected waste, and removed all obstacles to ease the work of firefighters.

Without the efforts made by these volunteers, and the efforts of 20 citizens who own the special water trucks and who worked with us day and night bringing huge quantities of water to the fire site, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve these results and extinguish the fire. 

How were you able to finally control the fire?

Extinguishing the fire took several days. The only effective way was to spray foam on the fire and on the burning tanks and to spray water on those near them in order to cool them and prevent the rise in their temperature. 

We were able to extinguish the fire in the first tank because we pumped out the oil using  trucks as there were no empty tanks to put the oil in, but fire broke out again many times because firefighters were obliged to leave the site as a result of the heavy armed clashes. 

If we continued our work without interruptions and without leaving the site many times because of the heavy fighting, we would have been able to extinguish the fire in a shorter period of time.  But the Grad rockets continued to fall in the area and the anti-aircraft 14.5 bullets kept flying over our heads. We have unfortunately come to realize that one of the parties is deliberately targeting the tanks and want to burn them as well as to burn everything near them. 

While doing your work, did you see fire erupting in other tanks?

Yes, one of the tanks, which were far from the fire, was hit by a bullet while we were working but we were lucky because fire did not break out.  We repaired the hole in the tank hit by the bullet in a very primitive way. We filled the hole with wood and cold welding materials and we were able to stop the leakage of oil and prevent the tank from catching fire. 

We were finally able to extinguish the fire, thanks to the efforts of these heroes who worked day and night for one full week to reach this result. However, the fire has started again to burn eight tanks after being hit by missiles. None of us was able to enter the depot to try to extinguish it because of the heavy fighting in the surrounding area.