While our airport has a reputation for bringing constant misery, the past few hours at Miami International Airport have been exceedingly miserable, even by its own standards. First a fuel tank exploded that caused a fire that took hours to put out. Then, even before that situation was controlled, the bomb squad was called in to investigate a suspicious package.
The fire broke out near the perimeter of the airport, far from the runway, at about 11 pm. Some sort of malfunction caused an explosion, and eventually all six fuel tanks at the airport were affected. Combined, the tanks could hold up to 6 million gallons of fuel each, thought it's likely they contained much less at the time of the blaze.
A spokesman for American Airlines says that the fuel supply was reduced by about 40 percent, and at least 37 flights scheduled to depart from the airport have been canceled.
It took about 30 firefighters, but eventually the blaze was under control by 1:30 this morning.
As if that wasn't enough, the bomb squad was also called in this morning to inspect a suspicious package. A bomb-sniffing dog alerted officers to a package left near the baggage carousel at around 7:20 a.m. this morning. Authorities evacuated a portion of the airport while investigating the situation. Any threat was contained, and the area was soon again open.
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