A fire at a marine terminal in Tuapse entered its fourth day before firefighters gained the upper hand. By the morning of April 24, the Krasnodar Krai emergency operations center reported that crews had contained the blaze and extinguished the open burning. Work to fully put out the fire was continuing, the center said, with 276 personnel and 77 pieces of equipment on scene.
The oil terminal at the port of Tuapse caught fire in the early hours of April 20 after a Ukrainian drone strike. The Ukrainian Armed Forces General Staff said afterward that the drones had targeted the Tuapse oil refinery, which forms a single industrial complex with the marine terminal.
The fire severely degraded air quality across the city and produced “oil” rains. Residents posted photographs of pets covered in soot and black puddles in the streets.
Rospotrebnadzor specialists began monitoring air quality in residential areas as early as April 20, authorities said, and found no exceedances of permissible pollutant concentrations. Rospotrebnadzor itself, however, published a guidance sheet urging residents in the fire zone not to open windows, to stay indoors as much as possible, and to wear masks and respirators outside if necessary.
Authorities had promised on the first day of the fire to publish measurements three times a day, but the next monitoring results did not appear until April 22 — after the “oil” rains had already fallen. The operations center said that as of the evening of April 21, air in the Grozneft, Sortirovka, and Zvezdny neighborhoods, as well as parts of the Central District, showed benzene, xylene, and soot concentrations exceeding permissible levels by two to three times. “The situation will normalize once the fire is extinguished,” officials added.
No new data has been published since. On April 24, authorities announced that street cleaning had begun in central Tuapse to address the aftermath of the fire at the oil complex. Officials separately said the work was being carried out without chemicals “so as not to harm the environment.” How city services plan to remove traces of burned oil — which requires solvents — is unclear, the independent Russian investigative outlet iStories noted.
Local residents complained that authorities had said almost nothing about the situation and had not canceled classes at schools, the independent Russian investigative outlet Agentstvo reported. One Tuapse resident posted photos showing a child’s hands covered in black spots: “Does no one think it might be worth switching the kids to remote learning for now?” she wrote. The local education department said students at three city schools could skip classes upon a parental request. Two kindergartens and one school that had stopped operating after the previous drone strike on the city on April 16 remain closed, as does the Krasnaya Ploshchad shopping center, located about three kilometers (1.9 miles) from the port.
A post by the Tuapse inter-district prosecutor’s office drew outrage and mockery — including from pro-war bloggers. On April 22, the office announced that its employees had “taken part in the city’s greening efforts.” The published photos showed prosecutors standing by flower beds with newly planted trees, black smoke visible in the background. The photos were later deleted.
Ukrainian forces struck the port of Tuapse twice in the second half of April. The port is home to an oil refinery that forms a single industrial complex with the marine terminal. The terminal also caught fire after the drone strike in the early hours of April 16; that blaze was fully extinguished only on the eve of the next attack.
After the first wave of strikes, a petroleum product spill was discovered in the Tuapse River and in the Black Sea near the port. Authorities installed boom barriers and specialized oil-collection equipment to contain the contamination, but heavy rains on April 24 caused petroleum products to overflow the barriers and reach the sea and its shoreline.
As crews cleaned up the fuel oil, the Tuapse city administration covered the municipal beach with fresh gravel, ecologists monitoring the situation in the city told iStories. Their sources said authorities had done this to ”conceal” traces of fuel oil that local residents can still see near the water.
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