Staffers left gas leak during lunch break unattended, 17 lost lives at pharma unit

VISAKHAPATNAM: The lives of 17 workers who perished in the Aug 21 chemical blast in an industrial unit in Andhra Pradesh's Anakapalli district could have been saved if the leakage of the deadly chemical, methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE), could have been stopped in time.

According to an official report of the state govt's factories department available with TOI, the production team of the pharma company, Escientia, came across a pungent smell of MTBE around 1pm on that day, over an hour before the blast. They discovered after cross-checking that MTBE was continuously leaking from a transfer line, falling through a slit on the first floor and onto the MCC (motor control centre) panel located on the ground floor. However, despite the impending clear danger, the engineering and production teams did not attend to the leakage as it was during the lunch break.

The entire building was provided with recirculated air handling units (AHUs) by having ducts on all floors, while the main AHU units are located on the ground floor. Meanwhile, vapours of the leaked chemical on the ground floor and first floor were sucked through these AHUs and circulated to other areas such as office rooms, quality control labs, and utility and material storage areas.

By the time efforts were made to control the leak around 2.30pm, it was too late: the concentration of MTBE vapours in the air had reached a dangerously high level, exceeding the lower explosive limit concentration (gas or vapour sufficient to result in an explosion) in all rooms connected to the AHU ducts.

Suddenly, the MCC panel room exploded, causing the cement-concrete walls to collapse in opposite direction. About five to 10 seconds later, a second explosion occurred in all AHUs, resulting in explosions in all rooms connected to them, all this in a span of five seconds. The back-to-back blasts left the employees and staff attending to the leakage and in these floors unawares. The magnitude of the explosions was so intense that some body parts of the victims were hurled high enough to land in trees next to the plant. For some victims, the bodies were charred and mangled, making identification extremely difficult.

The audit reports were submitted to the office of the deputy chief inspector of factories in Visakhapatnam.


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