VISAKHAPATNAM: Eleven people were killed and hundreds hospitalised after a pre-dawn gas leak at a chemical plant in eastern India on Thursday that left unconscious victims lying in the streets.

Fears that the death toll from the incident on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam, an industrial port city in Andhra Pradesh state, might rise significantly were not borne out.

The gas escaped out of tanks at a complex owned by South Korea’s LG Chem that had suspended operations because of coronavirus lockdown.

Footage on Indian television channels showed people slumped motionless in the streets after locals raised the alarm in the early hours.

“There was utter confusion and panic. People were unable to breathe, they were gasping for air. Those who were trying to escape collapsed on the roads,” local resident Kumar Reddy, 24, told reporters.

A police official said that by Thursday afternoon 11 people had been confirmed dead.

A hospital coordinator said 1,000 had initially been hospitalised, but by the afternoon around 600 remained receiving treatment, with none in a critical condition.

Pictures taken by photographers at the King George Hospital in the city early in the day had shown two or three patients on each bed, many of them children, and several unconscious.

Prayers

The incident had echoes of one of the worst industrial disasters in history when gas leaked from a pesticide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal in 1984.

Around 3,500 people, mainly in shanties around the plant operated by Union Carbide, died in the days that followed and thousands more in the following years. People still suffer its after-effects.

“I pray for everyone’s safety and well-being in Visakhapatnam,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.

The plant, operated by LG Polymers, a subsidiary of LG Chem, is on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam.

The city and the surrounding area are home to around five million people.

LG Chem released a statement in South Korea late on Thursday morning that the “gas leak situation is now under control”.

The plant had been left idle because of the coronavirus lockdown, according to an assistant police commissioner in Visakhapatnam.

“(The gas) was left there because of the lockdown. It led to a chemical reaction and heat was produced inside the tanks, and the gas leaked because of that,” the official said.

She said villagers raised the alarm at about 330am, saying there was gas in the air, and police who rushed to the scene had to quickly retreat for fear of being poisoned.

“One could feel the gas in the air and it was not possible for any of us to stay there for more than a few minutes,” she said.

LG Chem confirmed the plant, which makes polystyrene products, was not operating because of the lockdown, but there were maintenance staff at the facility, a spokesman in Seoul said.

According to the Times of India, the dead included an eight-year-old girl and 5,000 people had fallen sick.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2020