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April 17, 2026
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‘Ferocious’ fire By Jena Carr, with AAP Crew members at a Corio oil refinery are lucky to be alive after flames and explosions erupted at the facility late Wednesday night. Close to 50 firefighters, 10 fire trucks, and a boat attended the Viva Energy Geelong oil refinery shortly after 11pm on 15 April after a fire broke out at one of the units responsible for fuel production. “(It was) quite ferocious. The fire went from a small fire through several explosions to be quite a large, intense fire,” FRV assistant chief fire officer Michael McGuinness said. Australian Workers Union (AWU) branch secretary Ronnie Hayden said that although the fire was big, it could have been a lot worse.
It is a very good day because we should have been talking about fatalities, but now we’re just talking about getting the plant back online - Ronnie Hayden “It is a very good day because we should have been talking about fatalities, but now we’re just talking about getting the plant back online,” he said. “We had about 50 workers on site at the time, and there were some who said that they had seen the explosion and fires and were about 500 metres away. “The most important aspect of it was that the workers who were there were trained to deal with this, and it was because of their work that it didn’t escalate. “Nobody was injured...and nobody died. That’s not just good luck; that’s because our members were highly trained in dealing with a situation like this.” AWU Victorian Branch president Ross Kenna said the union had heard different stories about what may have caused the fire, but that investigations into the incident would be conducted. “Every time there’s an incident, we want to make sure that it’s not just their physical safety we look after, we’re also very keenly
Australian Workers Union members Shane Burd, Ross Kenna and Ronnie Hayden at the site where flames and explosions erupted at the Viva Energy Geelong oil refinery. (Pictures: Jena Carr) 547530_02
aware of their mental health as well,” he said. “We’ll make sure that the safety systems are in place to keep the surrounding community safe, and they should be proud of their local workers in Geelong who saved the place. “We want to make sure that the people of Geelong know that we’ll look after them... and that we will work with the company to try to get back to full production as soon as possible.” Production has been halted at the units affected by the fires, including those
responsible for producing petrol, speciality regional products, and aviation gasoline. Viva Energy Australia’s chief executive Scott Wyatt said there would be no immediate impact on fuel supplies as its imports would be sufficient to cover any shortfalls caused by the halt in production. “We’ll only start increasing production again once we’re confident we can do that safely,” he said. “To the extent we have shortfalls in production, just cover that with our import program, which is quite full for the next…couple of months.”
Viva Energy Geelong oil refinery. 547530_01
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