• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 994 0

letter, they formally accused the local plant’s management of being responsible for their comrade’s death. There was in fact an internal safety regulation that prohibited the storage of phosgene while the unit manufacturing it was not in production—as was the case at the time of Ashraf’s accident. There should not have been any gas in the pipes whatsoever. Yet, despite this regulation, a quantity of phosgene had been left in the tanks, and no one had warned the unfortunate operator. Even though Woomer punished the supervisor on duty, the company was liable for the accident in the view of some employees. According to the two trade union leaders, the accident pointed irrefutably to a decline in safety standards at Carbide. They were, therefore, going to ask the government of Madhya Pradesh to recategorize the factory immediately as a facility that produced high-risk products, and thus subject Carbide to much stricter safety requirements.

“For the first time people became aware of something that all our safety campaigns had been unable to make them appreciate: that the substances they were handling were deadly,” Kamal Pareek would say later. “But this time the danger had a face to it.”

On February 10, 1982, a little over a month after the death of Mohammed Ashraf, another accident occurred. Twenty-five workmen were poisoned and were rushed to the hospital. Fortunately there were no deaths to mourn. Gas had leaked from a phosgene pump. The fact that none of the victims had been ordered to wear protective masks while working in a sensitive area further outraged the two trade union leaders. The management defended itself by stating that leaks resulting from this type of mechanical failure never exceeded the toxicity level above which such incidents were likely to be fatal. Malviya and Ullah said they tried in vain to find out how and according to what criteria this “level,” which did not feature in any of the company’s manuals or official documents, had been determined. “It was one of many mysteries surrounding Carbide’s procedures in Bhopal,” they stated.

Their fury was not to abate. On October 5 of the same year, a third accident struck the factory in the middle of the night. This time it occurred in the unit producing methyl isocyanate. As an operator was opening a valve in a MIC pipeline, the joint linking it to several other pipes unexpectedly broke, releasing a huge cloud of toxic vapors. Before evacuating the area, the operator set off the alarm siren. A few seconds later, in accordance with the procedures set down by Kamal Pareek, the voice of the supervisor in the control room ordered a full evacuation of the plant. The position of the wind sock on top of the factory’s mast indicated a moderate wind blowing north–northeast. All those inside the factory took off as fast as their legs would carry them in the opposite direction, toward the Kali Grounds’ bustees.

The Mangala Express regularly wrested the residents of the bustees from their slumbers. Each evening, they dreaded the din it made as it went by. Only the elderly midwife Prema Bai did not suffer from its racket and that was because she was deaf. Her neighbors maintained that the noise of a herd of elephants trampling the hovels in her alleyway would not wake her. Yet it was she who gave the alert that night.

“Get up! Everybody up! There is a pandemonium at Carbide!” she shouted, running from hut to hut, her white widow’s sari flying out behind her.

Prema Bai had been the first to have heard the distant howl of the siren. Awakened by her cries, the neighbors got up one by one, grumbling. They were angry at being woken for a second time. Everyone strained their ears in the direction of the muffled howling coming from the plant.

“Perhaps someone’s set fire to it somewhere,” said a grinning Ganga Ram, who harbored a deadly hatred of Carbide.

“Calm down, friends!” intervened Belram Mukkadam. “We hear that siren nearly every day. It’s not sounding for us but for the guys inside the factory.”

“It may even have set itself off,” ventured the tailor Ahmed Bassi.