Gas Leak in India at LG Factory Kills 11 and Sickens Hundreds (Published 2020)
- ️Thu May 07 2020
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Residents in eastern India woke up in the middle of the night surrounded by a cloud of styrene vapor. Many couldn’t breathe.
Published May 7, 2020Updated May 8, 2020
NEW DELHI — D.V.S.S. Ramana, who lives about a mile from an industrial plant in eastern India, said he woke up early Thursday morning enveloped in a strange white mist.
He started coughing. His eyes burned. He flipped on his TV to learn that a cloud of toxic vapor had just escaped from a nearby plastics factory owned by the South Korean industrial giant LG Corp. in the Indian coastal city of Visakhapatnam.
Mr. Ramana jerked his wife and two children awake. As he rushed outside, he heard sirens blaring and saw people staggering into the street. Some collapsed right in front of him.
“We could smell the gas in our mouths,” Mr. Ramana said, speaking by telephone as he was driving off, trying to get his family as far away as possible. “It was terrifying.”
The leak, which officials said came from a tank of styrene, a liquid material used in making plastics, sent out a cloud of toxic vapor that drifted over the outskirts of Visakhapatnam, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds.
Dozens of men and women were left lying unconscious in the street. Mothers ran to hospitals with limp children in their arms. Police officers moved house to house to evacuate hundreds of people. Sometimes they had to break down doors because the residents inside were unconscious.
Indian officials said the accident happened around 2:30 a.m., as the chemical plant was restarting operations after a six-week hiatus because of India’s strict coronavirus lockdown. The tanks of styrene had been left unattended, Indian officials said, and in the course of the factory resuming operations, a major leak erupted.
“It seems unskilled labor mishandled the maintenance work and because of that, the gas leaked,” said Srijana Gummalla, one of the top government officials in Visakhapatnam.
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The plant had been closed since India’s coronavirus lockdown began in late March, but this week the lockdown was eased and many businesses, including heavy industries, have begun to reopen.
A former manager of LG Polymers, the Indian subsidiary of LG Chemical, said in an interview that liquid styrene required careful attention, and that because of the lockdown, workers were not going to the factory. He said that may have played a role in the leak.