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Design of district emergency operations centres
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas of the Government of India appointed a
seven member committee headed by M.B. Lal, former Chairman-cum-Managing
Director of the Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd., to investigate the causes of the
explosion. The committee report pointed out the 'gross negligence' during the transfer of
petrol from the storage tank. "The basic or root cause is an absence of site specific
written operating procedures, absence of leak stopping devices from a remote location
and insufficient understanding of hazards, risks and consequences", Lal told reporters a
day after submitting the inquiry report to Petroleum Minister Murli Deora (Rediff, 2010).
3.3 Damage due to fire explosion
The fire balls kept coming and smoke engulfed the city and the surrounding areas. Many
buildings of the nearby industries were destroyed, and the glass of buildings even
kilometres away was broken. The petrol vapours in the atmosphere made it difficult for
people to breath. There was death of 11 people, six of them IOC employees, three
employees of the adjoining Genus Company (manufacturing electronic house energy
meters and invertors), one elderly woman from Sitapura village and another unknown
person. There is common boundary wall between IOC depot emergency exit gate and
Genus. One employee of Genus died because the administrative building fell on him,
while two died near the boundary wall. People died due to bums and asphyxia. Over 300
people were injured.
One of the persons this author interviewed was living very near to the depot.
Although most of the people and his family members evacuated on 29 October, he and
another neighbour stayed put throughout the night outside their home. He said it was too
hot and every three minutes he was feeling thirsty and was drinking water. Due to the
intense odour, even breathing was difficult. There was carbon layer in the morning all
around. Small iron pieces of tankers were found all around.
3.4 Response to the explosion
Administration, police, fire brigade, ambulance, army, civil defence volunteers and other
services were immediately deployed for response. All the hospitals, government and
private, were put on high alert, and injured were taken to the nearest hospitals. The 5 km
radius area from the depot was cordoned off and declared 'danger zone'. All movements
in the danger zone were restricted, including the nearby railway movement. Half a
million people were evacuated. The electricity to the danger zone was intentionally
disconnected immediately to avoid any untoward incidents.
The technical matter of containment of fire was discussed by the fire officials with
the IOC officials. Technical experts of IOC also came from Mumbai. However, they did
not have any solution to stop burning of oil tankers till all the oil got burnt out. An
attempt was made to prevent the fire from spreading out. On the west side of the IOC
depot, on the other side of the highway there is depot of Bharat Petroleum Corporation.
Luckily the wind direction itself prevented the fire from going toward that side.
Firefighting trucks were called from adjoining cities and were placed all around the
cordoned off declared danger zone. In some places trenches five feet wide and deep were
dug and filled with water to prevent fire from spreading.
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