Storage Tanks Fire Delays Flights at Denver Airport : Holiday travel: Facility remains open, but fuel shortage throttles United Airlines. Pall of smoke hits city. Roads are jammed.

Two storage tanks containing nearly a million gallons of jet fuel caught fire Sunday near Stapleton International Airport, and firefighters tried to keep the blaze from spreading as an airline scrambled for fuel.

No serious injuries were reported.

Smoke from the blaze cast a pall over metropolitan Denver and caused visibility problems on nearby Interstate 70.

Norm Avery, a Stapleton spokesman, said the airport was still open, but United Airlines was forced to delay, cancel and divert flights because of a fuel shortage.

There also were traffic jams outside the airport on one of Stapleton’s busiest days, when travelers were returning from the Thanksgiving holiday.

The fire was reported about 9:30 a.m. at the fuel tank farm about half a mile north of the Stapleton terminal and just south of I-70. Firefighters trained hoses on nearby storage tanks also containing jet fuel to prevent the flames from igniting the tanks.

The blaze apparently was caused by a broken valve leading into one of the 400,000-gallon-capacity storage tanks, and the heat from that fire ignited the second storage tank, Avery said.

The storage tanks were part of Stapleton’s fuel storage farm, which supplies jet fuel to most of the airlines at the airport. It is the chief source of fuel for United.

In attempting to control the fire, firefighters shut off the underground pipeline from the tank farm to the Stapleton terminal, and United officials were scrambling to find ways to obtain jet fuel, said Stapleton spokesman Richard Boulware.

“United is virtually out of fuel and trying to make arrangements to get more,” Boulware said.

Flights from Denver to Los Angeles and other locations were delayed for as long as 3 1/2 hours, said Laura Winiarski, a spokeswoman for United Airlines.

Planes had to be refueled from tanker trucks instead, she said.

Flights to Denver were also delayed, but none has been canceled, she said.