Pulgaon fire: Veterans blast the system on social media

Nagpur: The blast at Army’s Central Ammunition Depot (CAD) at Pulgaon has triggered revelations by ex-servicemen on the social media, bringing out inside stories. The social media posts also speak of proposals to revamp the storage system which did not materialize. There were voices supporting the officers who died in the incident saying that it was a calculated risk to prevent a larger disaster.Fingers are being pointed out at the ammunition factories, blaming them to have made poor quality ammunition.
One of the posts, which was largely shared, quotes an expert claiming to be an instructor in the ammunition technology. The officer says, when he was in the Army headquarters, a private firm which holds and maintains US army’s ammunition depot in the city of Nevada had held a presentation. The Nevada depot is as big as Bangalore city, but due to full automation only 50-odd personnel handle the operations there. But then the cost was 30 times of that is required for maintaining the Pulgaon depot at that time, says the post.
The post also says that the distance in two storage sheds in India ranges from 90 to 180 meters depending on the type of ammunition to be stored. In the US, it is much more. But in India, space is a major constraint and often depots are surrounded by encroachments.
On lack of manpower, the instructor says, “Young officers from Services are sent to attachments without any reciprocity. There is a shortage of civilian manpower also. The peace-time depots like Pulgaon do not get any increase in manpower even if the ammunition tonnage goes up.”
Here is another post by one TPS Cheema which says, “Sir, I had the opportunity to visit some of the ammunition factories through my career. The less said the better.”
None of the officers have put their ranks against the names on the Facebook pages.
Ranbir Sethi says, “I had written a few days ago that a board of officers had carried out critical analysis of storage conditions in different depots during 1986-87 and suggested remedial measures for the safe custody of ammunition, including missiles. To my mind, no action was ever taken on that report. Who is responsible to ensure that ammunition is properly stored to avoid such incidents,” he asks.
“When I was the staff officer to chief of air staff, a thorough review was done of all the IAF arm depots, and estimates of revamping them came to an astounding figure. Don’t know how far that has progressed,” says Manmohan Bahadur, who also took part in the discussion.
Jaswinder Hanspal says, “The storage is foolproof. Have the advocates ever blamed DRDO/ordnance factories for substandard production? When I was in the service, the factory making HE casings for T-72 tanks in Orissa had made the copper driving oversized resulting the gun barrels exploding killing crew members. This was reported in the media,” he says.