Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [109]
The howl wrested Shekil Qureshi from his cup of tea. He ran out of the cafeteria and rushed to the control room where he met V.N. Singh, who had just come back up from the pipe-cleaning zone. Singh took off his mask. He was livid.
“The worst has happened. There’s nothing we can do,” he muttered, shaking his head, overwhelmed.
Qureshi protested fiercely, “It must be possible to contain this bloody reaction. I’m going quickly to see what’s going on.”
Singh called after his disappearing figure, “Your mask!”
“Can’t give orders with that thing over my face!” replied the Muslim, who was already scrambling down the stairway.
When he reached the erupting geyser, he stopped dead in his tracks. He could not believe his eyes. “It’s not true …” he murmured. There he was, the man who had been so convinced that no accident could happen in a factory that was not running, witnessing precisely the catastrophe of which all Carbide’s manuals, all its safety exercises, and all its security campaigns had persistently warned against: a terrifying, uncontrollable, cataclysmic exothermic reaction of methyl isocyanate. A massive reaction of a whole tank full, not just a few drops left in a pipe. How had such an accident come about, despite all the safety regulations? Qureshi beat a retreat and made for the zone where the tanks were. He had an idea. Even if it was too late to stem the eruption of tank 610, at least the contamination could be prevented from reaching the twenty tons stored in tank 611. His eyes were beginning to burn painfully. He was having progressively more difficulty breathing. In a blur he saw Suman Dey and his companion descending from the sarcophagus onto which they had courageously climbed to check the pressure indicator. The tank and its concrete casing were trembling, cracking and creaking as if shaken by an earthquake. The voice of the Muslim supervisor was faintly audible through the chaos.
“We must isolate 610! We must isolate 610!” He shouted himself out of breath.
Suman Dey did not agree. By turning off the valves and stopcocks connecting the reacting tank to its neighbor, they would risk increasing the pressure and possibly set off an explosion. But Qureshi had faith in the tank’s capacity to resist anything. How could this technological masterpiece that he had once witnessed arrive from Bombay, this precious jewel, the connections to which he had lovingly maintained, repaired and nurtured for so many years, possibly disintegrate like some common petrol tank? Dragging his two companions with him, he threw himself at the pipework. The ground was cracking beneath their feet. There was a noise as if the end of the world were coming. In ten minutes, they managed to shut off all communication between the two tanks. The twenty tons stored in the tank 611 would not be caught up in the gaseous apocalypse.
Their task completed, they immediately retreated at a run. Before disappearing into the stairway leading to the control room, they turned around. Tank 610’s concrete carapace had just shattered, releasing an enormous steel tank that emerged from its sarcophagus like a rocket, stood vertically, toppled, fell and stood up again before tumbling heavily onto the concrete and metal debris. But it had not burst. From a ruptured pipe at ground level a second geyser then erupted, more powerful and even fiercer than the first.
Before entering the control room Qureshi glanced at the wind sock flying from the top of its mast. He grimaced. Filled by an unremitting wind, the white material cone pointed clearly south, toward the neighborhoods