Venezuela Death Toll Rises After Refinery Blast

PUNTO FIJO, Venezuela—Firefighters battled towering flames at Venezuela's biggest oil refinery Sunday, a day after an explosion killed at least 41 people in the country's deadliest oil-industry accident in recent memory.

Columns of thick black smoke rose above the plains of Venezuela's northeastern state of Falcón, some 330 miles from the capital Caracas. The smoke was visible for at least 20 miles.

Crews battling the blaze had so far managed to contain the fire to two gas storage tanks at the 640,000-barrel-a-day Amuay refinery, despite shifting winds overnight.

Officials from state-run oil giant Petróleos de Venezuela, or PdVSA, said the blast hadn't damaged the production area of the refinery, and added that the refinery would be reopened in a few days, after the fire was put out.

President Hugo Chávez, who has battled cancer for the past year and faces a crucial re-election test on Oct. 7, declared three days of mourning and expressed his condolences in a written statement. "There is nothing more necessary in this difficult time than the unified solidarity among all Venezuelans," he said.

Some 200 homes were damaged by the blast and 33 families displaced, officials said. Of the reported fatalities, 18 were members of the National Guard stationed near the refinery, 15 were civilians and six bodies remained unidentified. Authorities Sunday reported two additional deaths of hospitalized victims of the blast but provided little further detail; several dozen were still hospitalized.

Residents of the Ali Primera zone, along the refinery's southern end, saw many windows and roofs collapse from the shock wave. "The place looked like a war zone," Ramón Guerra, a Punto Fijo resident who had helped in the rescue effort, said of the National Guard compound. "Everything was wiped out," he said, showing a video he had taken of the aftermath using a smartphone camera.

Juan Carlos Chirinos, a student, said he was in a nightclub when the explosion happened. "I lost my balance and a bunch of us fell to the floor," he said. "Everyone thought it was an earthquake or a car bomb outside. There were windows broken everywhere. It was total chaos."

Angel Mora, a former contractor who used to work on pipeline maintenance at Amuay, said gas-leak alarms didn't go off to alert the surrounding community. "We could smell the propane—and I knew it was propane because it's what we use for cooking—40 minutes before the explosion," he said. "It was so strong we had trouble breathing."

The explosion comes at a bad time for Mr. Chávez, who remains the favorite to win the October vote but has been losing ground to 40-year-old Henrique Capriles, a former state governor, several local opinion polls show.

In recent days, Mr. Chávez had apparently sought to match the door-to-door campaigning of Mr. Capriles and had hit the campaign trail, focusing primarily on the development of the oil industry and promising to boost Venezuela's oil output.

The explosion casts an uncomfortable spotlight on some of the oil industry's woes during Mr. Chávez's 13 years in power. Mr. Chávez visited the site Sunday and pledged to investigate the cause, but said it was wrong to say the explosion was due to lack of maintenance.

For decades before Mr. Chávez, PdVSA was run by industry professionals and kept at arm's length from the country's politicians. Despite being government-run, by some measures it was as efficient as private firms such as Exxon-Mobil.

But Mr. Chávez seized outright control of the company early in his presidency, firing 19,000 workers who went on strike and making PdVSA underwrite and sometimes take part in his myriad social programs.

The focus on social spending starved the company of its own revenue, leaving less money for investment and things like routine maintenance, contributing to chronic operational delays and accidents.

The politicization of the oil firm and a drive to nationalize most private oil projects in Venezuela also has caused the country's overall oil output to drop to about 2.7 million barrels a day now from an estimated 3.5 million before Mr. Chávez took power.

Jesus Luongo, general manager of the Paraguana Refining Center where the refinery is located, dismissed such criticism and said PdVSA has kept a "rigorous maintenance program," while spending more than $6 billion on upkeep.

Mr. Capriles, Mr. Chávez's opponent in the Oct. 7 vote, has promised to turn PdVSA back into a world-class company and bring in private oil firms to help Venezuela exploit its reserves, considered the world's biggest.

On Sunday, the candidate steered clear of politics in a Twitter message expressing his wishes for a speedy recovery for the injured. "We ask almighty God for the recuperation of all those people who have been hurt by…[the] accident," he wrote.