IT would have been horrifying if the fire at the Plumpang fuel depot had been a terrorist attack. Jakarta would be on red alert. Concern would spread and a fuel crisis would loom. Nevertheless, the cause of the fire, as announced by the police, was a malfunction in the tank’s safety valves.

This means, yet again, that maintenance is the weak spot in the management of a strategic entity like the Plumpang fuel depot. The malfunction in the safet