The fire occurred, and so did the damage. The company downplays the situation, but the Sarroch Health and Environmental Protection Committee is demanding clarity and, through certified emails sent to various agencies, is requesting detailed information on the fire that broke out yesterday morning inside the Sarroch refinery.
"The CCR (Continuous Catalytic Reformer) plant is not a marginal facility," a statement reads. "It is a central unit of the refinery, where naphthas are transformed into high-quality gasoline components and hydrogen is produced for other industrial processes. For this very reason, what happened cannot be dismissed with generic formulas or superficial reassurances."
Sarlux announced that "the incident, which occurred only at the unit, was promptly managed by operational personnel. To coordinate information, the provincial fire department was contacted, which was able to respond to the reports received at their headquarters. No impacts on people or the environment were reported."
The most serious fact, according to the committee, is another: "The Municipality of Sarroch, more than twenty-four hours after the event, has still not publicly informed the citizens. Residents learned the news that afternoon from external sources, from news outlets, and from publicly released images, not from the municipal administration."
Regarding an event that occurred within such a significant industrial facility, "the institutional silence is unacceptable. The public has the right to timely, clear, verifiable, and institutional information."
Added to this is another element that is defined as "extremely sensitive, and which must be verified with absolute urgency: there have been consistent reports from workers and family members of refinery workers that even the internal alarm system was not activated. If confirmed, this would be a very serious matter, which would call into question not only the management of the event, but also the actual protection of the workforce."
The committee contacted various agencies, from the Ministry of the Environment to ARPAS, and the Municipality of Sarroch, to request " documents and communications relating to the fire; the cause of the fire and the actual events; the systems involved; any emissions and environmental consequences; the emergency procedures activated; the flow of communications between the operator, the Municipality, and the regulatory bodies; verification of whether the internal alarm was not activated; and the reasons why the Municipality decided not to inform the public."