Precautions to be taken during and after the Industrial and Chemical Accidents

National Disaster Management Authority, India published in their official website the Precautions to be taken during and after the Chemical (Industrial) Accidents. I think, every citizen should read this Precautions and be aware about to handle Industrial accidents in our areas.

Precautions to be taken during and after the Chemical (Industrial) Accidents

1. Do not panic, evacuate calmly and quickly perpendicular to wind direction through the designated escape route
   
2. Keep a wet handkerchief or piece of cloth/ sari on face during evacuation
   
3. Keep the sick, elderly, weak, handicapped and other people who are unable to evacuate inside house and close all the doors and windows tightly.
   
4. Do not consume the uncovered food/ water etc open to the air, drink only from bottle
   
5. Change into fresh clothing after reaching safe place/ shelter, and wish hands properly
   
6. Inform Fire & Emergency Services, Police and medical services from safe location by calling 101, 100 and 108 respectively.
   
7. Listen to PA (Public Addressal) System of the plant/ factory, local radio/ TV channels for advice from district administration/fire/health/police and other concerned authorities
   
8. Provide correct and accurate information to government official.
   
9. Inform others on occurrence of event at public gathering places (like school, shopping centre, theatre etc.).
   
10. Don’t pay attention to the rumours and don’t spread rumours.
    

General Precautions During Normal Time

1. Do not smoke, lit fire or spark in the identified hazardous area
   
2. Sensitize the community living near the industrial units and they should be more vigilant about the nature of industrial units and associated risks.
   
3. Keep the contact numbers of nearest hazardous industry, fire station, police station, control room, health services and district control room, for emergency use.
   
4. Avoid housing near the industries producing or processing the hazardous chemicals, if possible.
   
5. Participate in all the capacity building programmes organized by the government/ voluntary organizations / industrial units.
   
6. Take part in preparing disaster management plan for the community and identify safe shelter along with safe and easy access routes.
   
7. Prepare a family disaster management plan and explain it to all the family members.
   
8. Make the family/ neighbours aware of the basic characteristics of various poisonous/ hazardous chemicals and the first aid required to treat them.
   
9. Adequate number of personal protective equipments needs to be made available, to deal with emergency situation.
   
10. Prepare an emergency kit of items and essentials in the house, including medicines, documents and valuables.
    

Causes and consequence of Bhopal disaster in 1984

As you know, the world's worst industrial disaster, the Bhopal disaster was occurred in December 1984. Bhopal industrial disaster, also referred as Bhopal gas tragedy, was a gas leak incident occurred at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL), more than 40 tons of methyl isocyanate gas leaked from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh state. As per the Government records more than 3750 peoples were dead, approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injured and 38,478 temporary partial injured.

Causes and consequence of Bhopal disaster in 1984

The cause of the disaster remains under debate (Wikipedia). There are two main lines of argument involving the disaster. The "Corporate Negligence" point of view argues that the disaster was caused by a potent combination of under-maintained and decaying facilities, a weak attitude towards safety, and an under trained workforce, culminating in worker actions that inadvertently enabled water to penetrate the MIC tanks in the absence of properly working safeguards.

The "Worker Sabotage" point of view argues that it was not physically possible for the water to enter the tank without concerted human effort, and that extensive testimony and engineering analysis leads to a conclusion that water entered the tank when a rogue individual employee hooked a water hose directly to an empty valve on the side of the tank. This point of view further argues that the Indian government took extensive actions to hide this possibility in order to attach blame to UCC.

Theories differ as to how the water entered the tank. At the time, workers were cleaning out a clogged pipe with water about 400 feet from the tank. They claimed that they were not told to isolate the tank with a pipe slip-blind plate. The operators assumed that owing to bad maintenance and leaking valves, it was possible for the water to leak into the tank.

However, this water entry route could not be reproduced despite strenuous efforts by motivated parties. UCC claims that a "disgruntled worker" deliberately connecting a hose to a pressure gauge connection was the real cause.

Early the next morning, a UCIL manager asked the instrument engineer to replace the gauge. UCIL's investigation team found no evidence of the necessary connection; however, the investigation was totally controlled by the government, denying UCC investigators access to the tank or interviews with the operators

Ref : Wikipedia