Five Past Midnight in Bhopal - Dominique Lapierre [69]
With the help of accomplices in the factory, Keswani managed to get hold of the text of the audit. He could not believe his eyes. The document described the surroundings of the site “strewn with oily old drums, used piping, pools of used oil and chemical waste likely to cause fire.” It condemned the shoddy workmanship on certain connections, the warping of equipment, the corrosion of several circuits, the absence of automatic sprinklers in the MIC and phosgene production zones, the risk of explosion in the gas evacuation flares. It cited the poor positioning of certain devices likely to trap their operators in case of fire or toxic leakage. It criticized the lack of pressure gauges and the inadequate identification of innumerable pieces of equipment. It reported leaks of phosgene, MIC and chloroform, ruptures in pipework and sealed joints, the absence of any earth electrical connection on one of the three MIC tanks, the impossibility of isolating many of the circuits because of the deterioration of their valves, the poor adjustment of devices where excessive pressure was in danger of allowing water into the circuits. It revealed the fact that the needle on the pressure gauge of a phosgene tank full of gas was stuck on zero. It expressed alarm at the poor state and inappropriate placement of safety equipment to be used in case of leakage or fire, and at the lack of periodic checks to ensure sophisticated instruments and alarm systems were functioning correctly.
All the same it was in the area of personnel that the report came up with the most startling revelations. It expressed concern at an alarming turnover of inadequately trained staff, unsatisfactory instruction methods and a lack of rigor in maintenance reports. Three lines in the fifty-one pages described a particularly serious mistake: an engineer had cleaned out a section of pipework without blocking off the two ends of the pipe with discs designed to prevent the rinsing water from seeping into other parts of the installation. One day this same sort of negligence would spark a tragedy.
“KINDLY SPARE OUR CITY!” exclaimed Rajkumar Keswani in the headline of his first article, published on September 17, 1982. Illustrating the risk the factory represented with numerous examples, the journalist appealed first to those in charge of it. “You are endangering our entire agglomeration, starting with the Orya Bustee, Chola and Jai Prakash districts nestling against the walls of your installations.” Then, addressing his fellow citizens, Keswani urged them to wake up to the danger that Union Carbide represented to their lives. “If one day disaster strikes,” he warned them, “don’t say that you did not know.”
Unfortunate Keswani! Like Cassandra, he had been given the gift of predicting catastrophe, but not that of persuasion. His first article passed almost unnoticed. Carbide was too firmly planted on its pedestal for a few alarming words in a sensationalist newspaper to topple it.
Undaunted, the journalist returned to the fray two weeks later. “BHOPAL: WE ARE SITTING ON A VOLCANO,” announced the Rapat Weekly of September 30, 1982, in block letters across the front page. “The day is not far off when Bhopal will be a dead city, when only scattered stones and debris will bear witness to its tragic end,” the author prophesied. The article’s disclosures should have sent the entire city rushing to the Kali Grounds to demand the plant’s immediate closure. They did not. Sadly, the Rapat Weekly was a lone voice crying in the wilderness.
The following week, a third article entitled, “IF YOU REFUSE TO UNDERSTAND, YOU WILL BE REDUCED TO DUST,” described in detail the leak, which four days earlier had led to the evacuation of the factory in the middle of the night and the general scramble on the part of the residents of Orya Bustee and its