Fire accidents in the city may not have been too serious so far, but who’s to say where negligence can lead?
Who is responsible?
The fire mishap at S M Labs in Moula Ali was the fourth such incident in the city this year. It follows a major fire accident at U-Foam Private Limited at the Sanatnagar industrial area on February 1, which was preceded by similar incidents at S R Organics, Jeedimetla IDA, on January 30 and Ramky’s Waste Management Plant at Dundigal on January 19.
The number of chemical fire mishaps are on the rise with at least two being reported almost every month. Last year, twelve fire mishaps were reported in the city. This year, already four major mishaps have happened claiming the lives of two and injuring several.
Though there are 200 chemical units functioning in the city and nearby areas, only a handful comply with fire safety norms that had been issued by the department of fire and emergency services. “Foam compound, fire pumps, fire hydrant and foam monitors are some of the basic equipment that a chemical industry should have. They should also follow fire safety measures to avert such disasters,” said G Pratap Reddy, additional director, fire department.
Moreover, with just one foam fighter (which is essential to combat chemical fire) for the whole of AP, the department of fire and emergency services itself seems ill-equipped to handle chemical fire mishaps.”There is a need for at least four foam fighters for Hyderabad, Tirupati, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam,” Reddy added.
Officials also blamed the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) for ignoring fire safety norms in industrial units. “IDA is doing everything, from providing land to setting up industries, houses and entertainment amenities. However it is doing precious little to install fire safety measures. According to rules, each industrial area should have its own fire brigade, but this important requirement is being ignored,” they say.
Danger Zone
Driving to the city outskirts of Hyderabad does not always mean driving away from its din and pollution. On the contrary, the number of smoke-belching factories and drug units dotting the city’s periphery make the concept of “peaceful suburbs’’ an almost surreal idea.
Citizen activists rue that even the water bodies and open spaces in the outskirts, which could have been otherwise used for recreation of citizens, have been contaminated due to indiscriminate dumping of waste by these industries. The recent Swedish study on Patancheru that found “treated’’ waste water in the area containing a cocktail of 21 different active pharmaceutical drugs is a case in point of all anti-pollution norms being broken brazenly. The explosion in the Moula Ali factory on Monday night further illustrated the poor safety precautions being taken by such units.
Unfortunately, Hyderabad is surrounded by an estimated 12,000 such factories, owners of which may not even remember when they last checked the effluent waste for toxics or carried out a safety check of their equipment. And this only means that Hyderabadis have to put up with increasing levels of stench and smoke.
But how did these industrial units come up so close to civilisation? City old-timers explain that it is actually the other way round: residential areas sprung around factories. This was not because livelihoods were dependent on these plants but because the city was expanding and the growth wasn’t exactly planned with residential complexes coming up wherever there was space.
S Jeevananda Reddy of the Forum for Sustainable Development says that factories on the city outskirts in the midst of residential areas is not a case of “industrial encroachment into public space’’ because when they came up, those parts were well away from Hyderabad.
Take for instance, a dairy in Tarnaka, the waste of which is causing residents much discomfort. “But this dairy was there even before our residential complex came up. We cannot possibly ask them to shut down,’’ says citizen rights activist V B J Chelikani Rao. But, he points out that what they as residents of the area can still do is to ensure that the dairy owners dispose their waste properly so that the stink does not become a nuisance. “In the same way, the industries on the outskirts of the city should be checked for proper waste disposal and liquidation of the hazardous chemicals that they emit,’’ he says.
Besides, denizens also point to the issue of illegal sanctions to industry owners that allow them to function without fear in areas banned from industrial use.
“There are a number of illegal industries operating on the outskirts of the city in places like Jeedimetla and Shamshabad. Unfortunately these factory owners are powerful and in spite of a Supreme Court judgment disallowing factories in these areas they continue to operate and pollute the surroundings,’’ says Jeevananda Reddy.
What has been an inadvertent fallout of polluted outskirts is the crowding within the city, particularly in areas such as Tank Bund, that remains the city’s most preferred open space. This lack of space on the city’s fringes is causing much concern to people like Srinivas Murthy, an architect. He says that the population cannot split into groups due to the lack of options, so areas like the Hussain Sagar lake are inevitably overcrowded. “This again leads to pollution of all kinds,’’ says Murthy, referring to the high pollutant levels in the lake.
Safety Norms Flouted
The chemical factory S M Labs Private Limited which was gutted after a high intensity explosion on Monday night, grossly violated the fire safety norms and did not even have portable fire extinguishers.
“As per the norms, construction of one lakh litre underground storage tank for fire fighting is a must. In fact, we had trouble extinguishing the fire as there was no water source,” the District Fire Officer (DFO) P V Ramana told TOI. A fire department official alleged that the Director of Factories and Commissioner of Industries had been giving permissions to factories without examining whether the required fire safety measures were actually in place.
The fire mishap in the factory at A S Rao Nagar, Moula Ali, ripped tin sheds of adjacent factories and houses in the nearby colony apart from causing cracks in some houses. Some glass panes also got smashed. The high intensity explosion ripped apart the compound wall and damaged the reactors, dryers, vats and a centrifuge in the company.
Locals said that the impact was felt in the three-kilometre radius of this bulk drug intermediate manufacturing company. Residents of some nearby colonies who initially saw their furniture shaking and doors slamming shut, thought that they were the midst of an earthquake. The thick smoke and irritating stench that engulfed the area after this, made them realise it was a fire mishap in a factory nearby.
“I thought it was an earthquake first. But soon the air got polluted and smoke from the burning factory could be seen at least two and a half kilometres away,” said Vijay Daniel. Yaseem Begum who stays in the New Srinagar Colony behind the factory said that due to the deafening sound, she rushed out of the house with her two daughters and sat on the road the whole night.”
While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, the company management denied that the fire was due to a reactor blast. All the 15 reactors in the company are intact, they say. DFO Ramana said, “The clues team collected the samples. It will take around four days to know the cause.”
Meanwhile, police have slapped a case against the management of SM Labs Private Limited under section 338 (Causing grievous hurt by an act which endangers human life) under the Indian Penal Code. If convicted, the persons responsible for the accident would face two years jail or fine of Rs 1,000 or both.
Police took the complainant from H Niranjan, a worker of the unit who suffered severe burn injuries in the fire mishap. “We also recorded the statement of Sravan Kumar, another worker who also suffered burn injuries, as evidence. The case is under investigation,” Malkajgiri inspector of police M Madhusudhan Reddy told HNN.
On Tuesday morning, a few residents staged a protest demanding compensation for the damage caused to their houses.
Wake up call
The explosion at a chemical factory in the Moula Ali industrial area recently, causing much panic in the surrounding areas highlights the negligence and blatant flouting of safety norms by factories in the city. Experts in industrial safety say that the accident could have been averted if the firm had paid heed to the warnings of locals who raised an alarm, complaining of a chemical smell emanating from the factory. However, nothing was done to arrest this leak, which was highly toxic as well as flammable, resulting in a blast which critically injured two workers and damaged the factory building.
Experts say that even though this incident was not as severe as other similar incidents in the past, more stringent rules and regular inspections could have prevented this accident.
Such accidents in chemical factories in the past have caused much damage and left lasting effects in surrounding areas, the Bhopal gas tragedy in 1984 being the most well known. There have been more such cases such as the blast in a Hindustan Petroleum refinery in Vishakapatnam in 1997 that reportedly killed 60 people. According to environmentalists, the HP explosion caused due to negligence of staff damaged crops and triggered respiratory diseases among locals.
Another such incident was a fire at a Hindustan Insecticides Ltd. plant in Eloor, Kerala, when more than 250 people were reportedly exposed to toxic fumes from the fire. Reports said the company which dismissed the fire as a major accident averted, had no on-site or off-site emergency plan and the fire hydrant was not working.
Sunil Mohanty, director (training) at NIFS says that such accidents are likely to occur as chemical plants generally involve very high risk processes and therefore need more precautions. “Most of the times the safety equipment installed at these industries are not maintained properly. So at the time of an accident they fail to be of any help. Factories should ensure that there is periodical checking of the equipment so that they can be used in case of an accident,’’ Mohanty says.
Lack of stringent checks of equipment used in these factories also lead to such accidents. “This (lack of inspections) results in exposing people working in and around the plants to a high level of risk,’’ says CK Bharadwaj, faculty member NIFS. Most safety experts also agree that due to the risks associated with the chemical industry a Health Safety Environment cell, which deals exclusively with occupational hazards and related environmental issues, should be put in place.
Another problem they say is that the staff working in this industry is often not equipped to deal with an accident involving chemicals. “Problems arise because proper training is not imparted to the workers. Even if the safety equipment is in place, it will be of no use if the workers do not know how to use them,’’ says Mohanty adding that the management of these industries should take it up on themselves to train their employees on how to handle safety devices during an emergency. “Accidents don’t happen, they are caused due to negligence. These incidents will continue if due care is not taken by officials as well as workers,’’ says Bharadwaj.
However, senior officials of the $ 35 billion chemical industry say that most companies are taking safety precautions and are aware of chemical hazards. “There are two safety concerns in chemical units: one related to equipment and another to chemical processes, with the latter posing a more serious hazard. But nowadays, modern equipment is being used which is not only safe but more energy efficient and thus cost effective,” says H S Karangle, director general, Indian Chemical Council. However, he does say that there could be pockets of industries where cheaper equipment is still being used. Nevertheless, he says the council holds training programmes to address precisely such safety concerns.
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