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PT Pertamina's Plumpang depot in North Jakarta caught fire on Sunday night, following a large explosion which sent flames some 100 meters into the air, residents and police have reported.
Eyewitnesses reported that the explosion occurred at 9:24 p.m. .

Brandon Hoover is a resident at the Gading Kirana complex, next door to the depot.

Hoover said he felt the explosion shockwave hit his home “quite powerfully.”

“[The plant] is literally just over the wall from us, around 300 meters away. We just felt the wall at our complex shake when the explosion hit and the sky started turning red,” Hoover said.

“Being the only expat in my complex, I immediately grabbed a few things and got in the car to my workplace because I wasn’t sure what was happening,” he said.

“Later on I decided to head back and get my passport and some cash, and by then some of my neighbours were also evacuating.”

Hoover said that the streets were busy and it seemed many residents were now trying to leave the Kelapa Gading area. There were also long queues at the Pertimina gas stations in the area, he said.

“The main road going out of Kelapa Gading has a lot of traffic at the moment,” he said.

Emergency service personnel had so far not given local residents any information about the situation, he said.

On the social networking site Twitter, other nearby residents said they had witnessed flames some 100 meters high and authorities had begun evacuating nearby homes.

One user described the smoke from the explosion as resembling "the mushroom clouds from atom bombs."
The depot supplies diesel and gasoline to Jakarta and to West Java, a Pertamina official told Reuters.
He was unable to give any details as Pertamina officials are on their way to the site, he said.
Police and firemen are at the site, the police said.