Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [134]
It was exactly two in the afternoon by the clock in Spices Square on that Monday the third of December when the smoke from the first funeral pyre rose into the sky over Bhopal, reducing to ashes those people whom Carbide’s beautiful plant had promised happiness and prosperity. Blowing now from the south, a light breeze carried away the last traces of deadly gas and replaced them with a smell even more appalling: the aroma of burning flesh.
44
“Death to the Killer Anderson!”
Tuesday December 4, eight-thirty A.M. The athletic figure of the CEO of Union Carbide made his entrance into the boardroom at the company headquarters in Danbury, Connecticut. Since the previous day, Warren Anderson had been given hourly reports on the situation in Bhopal. For a son of immigrants who had managed to haul himself up to the top of the world’s third largest chemical giant, the tragedy was as much a personal disaster as a professional one. Anderson had set his sights on making Union Carbide an enterprise with a human face. Of his 700 industrial plants, employing 117,000 people in 38 countries, the Bhopal factory had been his favorite. It was he who had inaugurated it on May 4, 1980. The first drops of MIC that emerged from its distillation columns that day had been his victory. Thanks to the Sevin thus produced, tens of thousands of Indian peasants would be able to conquer the menace of famine.
As soon as he heard about the tragedy, he had set up a special team to deal with events in total transparency. He had arranged for the media to maintain a constant link to the company spokespeople. Then he had shut himself away in his home office in Greenwich to think about what his initial reaction should be. Having made his decision, he called his closest assistants. Despite the terrified entreaties of his wife Lilian, he would leave immediately for Bhopal. His place was there, among the victims. He wanted to see for himself that everything that could be done was being done. His gesture would help underline the fact that the company he controlled was not a faceless, soulless giant, and that the recent tragedy was just one accident along a path intended to create a better, more just world. In short, his presence at the scene of the catastrophe would be an expression of the ideal that inspired him.
In addition to a sense of moral obligation toward the victims, he also felt a responsibility to the company’s shareholders. Doubtless Carbide had the financial means to survive the worst possible disaster. But if the terrible news he had received was accurate, his duty was to do everything in his power to prevent his company from appearing cruel or irresponsible to its shareholders.
By the somber faces that greeted him that Tuesday morning in the presidential boardroom at Danbury, Warren Anderson could tell that his colleagues were hostile to his plan. There was no shortage of arguments against it. First, he would be risking his life: India was an unpredictable country. One month earlier, Indira Gandhi had been assassinated because her army had killed far fewer people than had died at Bhopal. Some grief-crazed survivor might make an attempt on his life. Then again, under pressure from outraged public opinion, the Indian government might imprison him on arrival. Either way, his journey risked giving the unnecessary impression that the multinational was directly responsible for the tragedy, when it would be better to let its Indian subsidiary take all the blame. There was also the fact that there was every likelihood that the visit would be perceived as a provocation. Finally, it would expose the company’s chairman to dangerous confrontations with India’s new political authorities, and with the press, lawyers, judges, diplomats… . Even those in charge of the Indian subsidiary who had been consulted over the telephone showed little enthusiasm for the idea of having their top man arrive at the scene of the accident. Anderson, however, had made up his mind.
“I’ve weighed all the risks,” he declared, “and I’m going.”
On Thursday