THE BHOPAL DISASTER the Union Carbide Factory
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HEALTH 206 THE BHOPAL DISASTER the Union Carbide factory. One of them is Ramnarayan Jadav, a driver of the city corporation, who says that he had started Ashay Chitre, a film maker living in Bhopal’s prestigious Bharat feeling the gas around 11.30 itself. But he stayed on for at Bhawan, built by the state government to attract artists to this least another 45 minutes because “this much gas used to leak central Indian city, heard a commotion outside his window early every eighth day and we used to feel irritation in the chest and in the morning at about 3 a m. It was a chill December and all in the eyes. But finally everything used to calm down.” Even the windows of Chitre’s house were closed. As Chitre and his if the company had set off its warning siren then, many could wife Rohini, seven months pregnant, opened the window, they have escaped. got a whiff of gas. They immediately felt breathless and their eyes But nothing happened and many thousands woke up only and noses began to stream with a yellow fluid. between 12.30 and 1 am, by which time the gas was spreading Sensing danger, the couple grabbed a bedsheet and ran out in high concentrations. People woke up coughing violently and of the house. Unknown to them, all the neighbouring bunga- with eyes burning as if chilli powder had been flung into them. lows, which had telephones, had already been evacuated. Their As the irritation grew and breathing became impossible, they immediate neighbour, state labour minister Shamsunder Patidar fled, some with their families and many without. They got on to had fled. The chief minister, who lives only 300 m from the whatever they could — cycles, bullock carts, buses, cars, Chitres had probably also been informed in time. autorickshaws, tempos, trucks and mopeds. Scooters had Outside their house the Chitres found chaos. There was gas whole families on them. Trucks were full but people hung on everywhere and people were running for their lives in every direc- outside, some grabbing the legs and hands of those already tion, with nobody to tell them the safe way out. Some fell down inside. Small children, old men and women were pushed in vomiting and died. The panic was so great that people left their handcarts or carried. children behind, or did not stop to pick up those overcome by By 3 am the main thoroughfares were jammed with an exhaustion or the gas. At one place, the couple saw a family stop unending and uncontrollable stream of humanity. The streets running and sit down: “We will die together”, they said. Another were foul with vomit. Those who fell were trampled by the person ran for 15 km in a desperate bid to escape. A passing crowd. The worst affected were the children: unable to walk and police van had no clue to the safe direction. Stepping over dead breathe, they simply suffocated and died. bodies, the Chitres ran towards the local polytechnic, half-a-kilo- Thousands fled to towns hundreds of kilometres away: metre away, where they stopped and decided not to go further. Sehore, Vidisha, Hoshangabad, Raisen, Obaidullaganj, Ashta, Two hours later, at about 5 am a police van arrived announc- Ujjain, Dewas, Indore, Ratlam and even Nagpur, 400 km away. ing that it was safe to go back home. But nobody believed the About 10,000 men, women and children reached Sehore policemen. From the polytechnic, the Chitres rang friends on the between 2 am and 4 am. Another 10,000 went to Raisen. They other side of the town for help. They returned home three days flocked to the district hospitals for treatment. Hundreds of later. Their pomegranate tree had turned yellow and the peepul people who dashed to Ujjain and Indore had to be immediately tree, black. Three days after that fateful night, Rohini began to hospitalised there. In the midst of this frenzy, there was no dearth experience pain whenever she exercised and Ashay felt his legs of valour. Hundreds of taxi, autorickshaw, tempo and truck buckle. They immediately left for Bombay to see a neurologist to operators risked their lives to evacuate thousands of people. ascertain their fate and that of their unborn child. The gas that spewed out of the hi-tech factory of the multinational Union Carbide spread over some 40 sq km and Mass panic affected people seriously as distant as five km to eight km down- There were thousands of others that night in Bhopal for whom wind. For nearly 200,000 people, a quarter of the city’s popula- this macabre drama began much earlier and who were a lot tion, Bhopal became a gas chamber. If it were not for the two less luckier than the Chitres. Most of them were the city’s lakes of Bhopal which came in the way of the gas cloud and poor, living in the sprawling settlements opposite and around neutralised it, an even bigger tragedy could have taken place. Carbide’s lies manager, at home. Mukund was not even aware of the gas escape and replied: “The gas leak just can’t be from my plant. The plant is shut The response of Union Carbide to the happening of that ghastly night down. Our technology just can’t go wrong. We just can’t have such was lies. As victims crowded into the Hamidia Hospital, L D Loya, the leaks.” company’s medical officer, told the frantic doctors: “The gas is non- At no point during that night did Union Carbide itself try to reach poisonous. There is nothing to do except to ask the patients to put a wet the authorities with information about the leak or tell them what to do. towel over their eyes.” At about 3 am Union Carbide did send a man, a retired major who This was not Union Carbide’s only lie. At about 1 am, city works with a private security outfit employed by the company, with the Superintendent of Police Swaraj Puri was woken up by a town inspec- message that the leak had been plugged, a blatant lie as no plugging tor telling him that people in Chola, a settlement about two km from ever took place; the gas had simply stopped oozing. But Mukund the plant, were fleeing because of a gas leak. Puri rushed to the again told a reporter the next morning that the leak had been plugged police control room by 1.25 am only to find the duty staff coughing within minutes of his being informed. violently and rubbing their eyes. Between 1.25 am and 2.10 am he In fact, even 15 days after the disaster and thousands dead, called the plant three times; twice he was told: “Everything is OK.” The Mukund was still defending his statement: MIC is only an irritant, it is third time: “We don’t know what has happened, sir,” before the phone not fatal. “It depends on how one looks at it. In its effects, it is like tear was banged down. gas, your eyes start watering. You apply water and you get relief. What At about 1.45 am — 45 minutes after the leak was confirmed — I say about fatalities is that we don’t know of any fatalities either in our the Additional District Magistrate got through to J Mukund, the works plant or in other Carbide plants due to MIC,” said Mukund. 207 INDIA’S ENVIRONMENT — 1984-85 That fateful night horrified. As he stood on a concrete slab above the storage tanks, the slab suddenly began to shake. “There was a tremendous sound, a Exactly what happened in the Union Carbide factory that night is still not messy boiling sound, underneath the slab, like a cauldron.” He ran, only known officially from the Government of India. But press reports have built to hear a loud noise behind him. The slab, made of 60 feet of concrete at up the following sequence of events. least six inches thick, was cracking. The heat was like a blast furnace. He MIC is stored in three double-walled, partly buried stainless steel tanks couldn’t get within six feet of it. He then heard a loud hissing sound and — code named 610, 611 and 619. While thousands slept in their huts saw gas shoot out of a tall stack connected to the tank and form a white around the pesticide factory on the night of December 2/3, a skeleton staff cloud drifting over the plant and towards the sleeping neighbourhood. In of 120 workers inside the factory ended its evening shift around 10.45 pm the plant, he found that the pressure indicator had gone above 55 psi, the and a new shift took over around 11 pm. One of the workers then noticed top of the scale, and the safety valve had opened releasing MIC from the that the pressure in tank 610 — the tank from which all the MIC finally storage tank. escaped — had risen from the two lb per square inch (psi), recorded by the As the workers realised it was a massive MIC leak, Qureshi ordered earlier shift, to around 10 psi. Corresponding tank temperatures were not all water sources in the area shut off. Over three hours before, a available as they were not logged normally. The five-fold increase in Calcutta battery factory owned by Carbide had asked a novice operator to pressure within an hour was dismissed in the belief that the pressure clean a pipe.