Haiti Blast Not Seen Deepening Fuel Shortage

A spectacular explosion that destroyed the capital’s main center for contraband gasoline sales probably will not seriously worsen Haiti’s fuel shortage from a U.N. embargo, diplomats said Sunday.

They said smuggling of fuel from the neighboring Dominican Republic has increased recently in defiance of the embargo imposed in an effort to force the army to let President Jean-Bertrand Aristide return to power.

There was no indication of sabotage in the explosion late Saturday, which set off a fire that destroyed buildings along half a block of Rue de Cesar in downtown Port-au-Prince.

No casualties were reported, but authorities said Sunday that they could not be sure until the wreckage was searched. About a dozen soldiers guarded the site while firefighters sprayed water over the smoldering ruins.

A number of warehouses, stores and at least one hotel were destroyed by the blaze, which lit up a blacked-out stretch of the city. Tens of thousands of gallons of contraband gasoline and diesel fuel were stored in the warehouses in 55-gallon drums, eight-gallon plastic containers and gallon jugs.

Haiti’s already impoverished economy has suffered from the fuel embargo imposed in October after military leaders reneged on an agreement to allow the return of Aristide. He was overthrown in a bloody coup in September, 1991, after less than a year in power as the country’s first freely elected president.

The army has stockpiled gasoline in underground depots around the capital, but the fuel at the burned warehouses was the main source of sales to Haitian citizens. With normal importers observing the embargo, Haitians have been storing fuel in makeshift stockpiles throughout the capital.

“The embargo is the root cause of this catastrophe,” said Carl Denis, head of the far-right National Coalition, which wants to suspend the constitution and hold new presidential elections to replace Aristide.