Bhopal,central India,1984
city residents went choking and unable to breathe,
stampeding & panic thousands die,
poisoned by the very air around them,
an american owned factory supposedly rigged with safety systems,
triggers the world's deadliest Industrial accident
disasters dont just happen they are a chain of critical events
unravel the clues and countdown those final seconds from disaster..
Bhopal, India
Dec 3rd 1984,
5 past midnight,
at Union Carbide pesticide plant, workers detect a minor gas leak
affirmative,
control room operator Suman Dey is the first point of contact..
Suman leaves the control room to search for the leak,
he heads over to the storage area where the plants most volatile chemicals are kept buried, under a thick layer of concrete,
alongside 1st tin used as a chemical weapon during World War 1
is massive volume of MIC(methyl isocyanate),the main ingredient of SEVIN,the pesticide,the plant produces.
Its one of the world's most toxic chemicals.
The distinctive smell of gas tells you that the leak is close by.
Minor gas leaks are regular on records and workers have learned to live with choking effects.
Plant workers call again.
But in the 15 year old plant,inaccurate meter readings are common.
So Suman takes another look at pressure gauge.
In mins, the pressure in chemical storage tanks,they shot up the scale..
12:20
Suman Dey rushes to the storage area where its immediately clear that something is very wrong.
As Suman sprints for the control room gas escape to the factory's maze and pipes.
12:30
Suman implements emergency procedures to neutralise the gas.As it passes through a cleaning column called the Vent Gas Scrubber.
But nothing happens.
Then the gas passes through the flare towers designed to burn off any escaping gas.
But again nothing..
On the huge pressure, the gas percolates through the network of pipes, up venting chimney and out into the atmosphere.
Operators are powerless to stop toxic gas pumping into the night sky.
Its not just the plant workers at risk..
1 am
The Union Carbide plant is right next to the residential hub of Bhopal.
And a south easterly wind blows the toxic cloud straight towards its half a million inhabitants.
Not far from the factory,plant worker T.R. Chauhan has the weekend off.
But in the dead of night,he suddenly worsened.
As the gas cloud condenses,it sinks to ground level clothing the sleeping city in a poisonous blanket.
Almost immediately empty streets fill with residents
gasping for breath in terrified confusion.
Meanwhile at the factory,safety systems that neutralise or burn the gas still ain't working
and factory's final barrier to all out disaster has also failed.
Workers have grabbed emergency water hoses to spray and dissolve the escaping gas
but the water jets ain't powerful enough to reach the gas spewing from the chimney.
After half an hour,the flow of toxic gas shows no sign of slowing down.
Across town,a late night phone call wakes Dr Bhandari,a senior consultant at Bhopal's main hospital.
Hello! No! No! Stood on please
You just rinse their eyes and put some eye drops.
Yes! Yes! I am coming there shortly.
Alarmed by the unusual call,Dr. Bhandari checks outside for any signs of gas.
With every min the invisible gas clouds spreads covering an area some 8 kms wide
locals only know its impossible to breath.
Tens of thousands flee their homes in a panic stampede choking to death as they run.
At the union carbide plant,Suman Day is safely sealed inside the control room.
But with work his unaccounted for,he goes back into the factory on a rescue mission.
but he soon learnt about it all.
Across the city,factory worker Chauhan and his family are desperate.
In the chaos, they know they must flee or perish.
Chauhan convinces the driver to help them.
After a violent coughing tint,Dr Bhandari has recovered enough to reach the hospital.
Whats happening?
they are just coming and coming and coming.
And what about her?
Dr.I washed her eyes with water but its not helping.
The police have told him he is dealing with a leak of ammonia.
Bhandari expects conventional treatments will solve the patients problems.
But the symptoms are far more extreme.
His standard remedies are ineffective.
Thousands of choking dying Bhopalis overwhelmed the hospital
and Bhandari needs answers.
He is convinced the gas isn't ammonia.
You dont understand.There are hundreds of patients outside my clinic
Just tell me what gas is this?
Unknown to the medics,MIC is reacting with the water in victims bodies forcing blood to pour into the tiny spaces in the lungs making breathing.. impossible.
By daylight of Dec 3rd,the gas has dissipated across the country.
But in Bhopal, some 3000 people lie dead
and more than 300000 are suffering the agonising consequences of exposure to MIC.
Suman Dey and other plant workers survived the night.
In the daylight he sees the devastation of his city for the first time.
The worst affected are the old and young.Often trapped in condensed spars of the cloud close to the ground.
Within hours Bhopal hits the headlines.
The death toll over Bhopal's disaster stands over 2500.The worst industrial accident in history.
In this area, opposite the Union Carbide site about 10,000 people live.
But this morning, the entire slum is empty.
Horrow of the scale of suffering is followed by a simple question..How could this happen?
The day after the disaster,the Indian government dispatches chemist Dr Thyagarajan to make the plant safe.
The Bhopal plant mass produced SEVIN and company officials tell Thyagarajan the MIC needed was carefully stored in liquid form in tanks buried deep underground.
But workers say the tank E6 10 was 75% full way over the corporation's 50% recommendation.
Its entire 42 tons of lethal MIC evaporated and escaped
and then Thyagarajan makes another shocking discovery.
E6 10 is just one of three tanks buried in the bunker.
Bhopal had massive storage capacity.
But unlike other Union Carbide factories, it was only producing a few tonnes of SEVIN per day.
So a huge backlog of MIC was stored for weeks on end.
One tank should be kept empty as a back up but workers say that at Bhopal all three carried the deadly chemical.
Only E6 10 has burst but there is no telling if others may blow too.
Thyagarajan must urgently make them safe.
As Bhopal reels from the disaster Union Carbide CEO Warren Anderson flies in from America to assess the situation.
When police realise Anderson is the man ultimately responsible for the plant, they arrest him.
What i would like to do i hope you can help me.Tell my wife. I am alive and well.
But local journalists think that police action is just for show.
At the airport itself, he was informed that he was under arrest
but he was not taken into a lock up,he was taken to the Union Carbide guest house
which was the most beautiful place in those days in Bhopal.
Hours later, Anderson is released on bail and quickly flees the country.
At the pesticide factory,Dr. Thyagarajan must decide how to deal with the remaining 35 tons of MIC.
The MIC appears to be stable for now,but workers tell him that tank E6 10 was normal until almost the moment it erupted.
Thyagarajan knows its vital to dispose the every last drop to avoid a second disaster.
But there is only 1 terrifying way to do it, switch the malfunctioning factory back on.
Only 13 days after the disaster,with thousands still dying and tens of thousands in hospital.
Operators are ready to try to neutralise the remaining MIC.
Officials still have no idea how the 1st disaster happened and top there the risky new plan '"Operation Faith."
But for the people of Bhopal restarting the factory so soon after the lethal disaster is a terrifying prospect.
The people thought once the factory starts operation
and the same gas which has killed several thousand people
may get leaked again.
There was no such guarantee. People had no faith.
With safety measures in place, operators restart the plant.
As production begins,Bhopalis panic and flee the city.
As the remaining MIC is drained even hospital patients joins leaving only those too sick to escape.
It was a deserted city.
It takes an agonising 7 days to turn the remaining MIC into SEVIN pesticide.
A second disaster is averted.
The people of Bhopal return but they are furious.
Now by rewinding the crucial events and dwelling deep into the investigations that followed the tragedy
we find out exacty what went wrong on that terrible night in Bhopal.
Dr.Thyagarajan knows 42 tons of deadly MIC stored safely as liquid in underground tanks
turned into a gas and escaped into the atmosphere killing thousands.
Now he has to find out how.
He goes straight to the storage bunker where he finds massive cracks in the tank's concrete casing.
This is a dramatic evidence of a violent chemical reaction on a huge scale.
Investigators dig up the buried tank E6 10 to find out how the gas escaped.
Despite evidence of enormous pressure,the tank itself hasnt split.
Thyagarajan's team discovered that the emergency pressure release valve erupted.
The gas escaped through emergency venting system,then out into the atmosphere,
Something must have triggered it.
Dr. Thyagarajan suspects a substance normally considered innocuous.
Contact with water causes MIC to heat up,boil and vapourise
and that reaction is much more violent if other chemicals are added.
The searches find powdery residues inside the tank and send them for testing.
Thyagarajan's team discoveres traces of ions left in the empty tank.It points to a clear conclusion.
A huge volume of water combines with metal impurities sparked the violent and deadly reaction.
Investigators now know what caused the Bhopal's deadly catastrophy but not how it happened.
In a chemical plant operating state of art safety systems this disaster should have been impossible.
Union Carbide had chemical plants worldwide and was fully aware of MIC's dangerous volatility.
Like everyone of their factories the Bhopal plant had safety systems to prevent any chance of contamination.
We have heard more and more about what happened in Bhopal, India.
Within days of the disaster, Union Carbide boss Warner Anderson claims this was no accident
"It doesnt sound like something thats inadvertant and it could be a deliberate action."
With a clear implication of sabotage within the plant,trade unions representing workers seek an independent opinion.
They invited American investigator Michael Wright to Bhopal.
but the authorities deny him of work visa,so he must operate in secret.
Neither Union Carbide nor the Indian Government really want its clear.
As health and safety director for America's steel worker union,his expertise is in the safe operation of large factories.
Things like Bhopal are what we technically call "Low probability High consequences accidents".
These are accidents that happens rarely but when they happen they are huge,they are catastrophic.
With no official cooperation,Wright is forced to travel as a tourist to Bhopal.
There he witnesses the scale of the suffering.. first hand.
We walked through the neighbourhoods and the women were coughing because they were exposed to this terrible toxic chemical.
We meet kids who lost their parents,parents who lost their kids,
we have to put aside the whole what happened and figure out how it happened.
You gotta look at all the possible scenarios and a lot of actual investigation is eliminating what didn't happen.
Wright isn't allowed into the plant itself so only a covert investigation will help him discover the immediate causes of the disaster.
We were able to get the photographs of all kinds of equipments inside the plant.
We also were able to get the technical operating manual for the plant
and we talked to workers,we talked to we think everybody who was on duty that night,
Indian investigators discovered that water entered the MIC tank and triggered the fatal accident.
So Wright studies factories schematics to find out where that water came from.
He is immediately suspicious of a chemical processing unit right next to the MIC tanks.
That process unit which sometimes clog,the way you clear the clog was by pushing up a water hose and blowing water through the system
that wasn't a dangerous operation.
But in clandestine meetings,factory operators tell him corners have been cut.
The company installed a chopper line between those two process units.
A piped shortcut to the MIC storage area allowed operators to use equipments interchangeably.
But it permanenly linked the lethal chemical to the rest of the plant.
That made the plant much more dangerous.
If you had isolated that processing unit completely then water could have never got into it.
The jumperline provided a direct route through which water could reach the MIC unit.
Wright discovers that workers flushed out the pipes on the night of the disaster.
One worker began operation at 9:30 pm.,he noticed that water wasn't coming out at the other end
eventually water did start coming out at the end and everybody thought that things were fine.
They were unaware that a backlog of water headed through connecting pipes towards the MIC unit. But still a simple safety device should have blocked its progress.
This metal plate called a slip line slides into the junction of two pipe sections forming a water tight seal,whenever pipes are being washed.
That slip line was not there,thats what allowed water to get into the tank.
Even if the water did reach the MIC tanks,the plant's schematics told Wright that there is one last barrier to stop it getting in.
Inert nitrogen gas is pumped into the MIC tank providing a safe high pressure layer between the lethal liquid
and the rest of the plant.
Its a system Wright has seen before.Its safe and efficient.. usually.
But plant workers revealed faults in the system.
In a 15 year old plant,staff were accustomed to occasional faulty readings
but plant worker Chauhan knew a total failure to pressurise the tank could only mean one thing.
Checking the factory records,Chauhan sees the problem is gone unreported for weeks.
And if a faulty value is letting nitrogen out,it could let water in.
Water took a pathway into that valve and that valve would have stopped it
but as the valve was leaking we think water passed through made into the MIC tanks.
It occurs to Wright that Union Carbide's claims should have weight,may be this was a case of sabotage.
Someone could have damaged the nitrogen valve and removed the slip line deliberately.
The ions that fuelled the reaction could simply be the rust of the pipes.
May be they didn't anticipate the accident of that magnitude.
Union Carbide claims that a disgruntled worker purposely pumped water into the MIC tanks.
All we are trying to do is differentiate from an inadvertant to perhaps a deliberate.
But Wright isn't ready to draw conclusions.This aweful event still has secrets to be discovered.
The real story of Bhopal is less how did water enter the tank and more why did none of the security systems that should have protected people
operate that night.
The first safeguard was the Vent Gas Scrubber.
If any dangerous gas leaks it's channeled into a large bottle shaped tank
and forced through a column of caustic soda making it inert.
When Wright meets with workers from the plant,he makes a shocking discovery.
The workers said they hadn't seen any instrumentation that indicated it was arbitrary.
The Vent Gas Scrubber the first of three,critical lines of defence was out of action.
Wright shifts his attention to other safety features.
MIC is highly flammable and a flare tower sits ready to burn off any MIC gas that hasn't been neutralised
but he finds it wasn't working either.
They had taken a piece of corroded pipe about 4 feet section out of it and never replaced it.
Had that been operating,it would have completely eliminated the release.
With two systems down there was one last mechanism to protect the people of Bhopal from the MIC gas.
Hoses are positioned around the emergency vent tanks and workers are trained to spray water
into any remaining gas as it leaves the chimney.
MIC dissolves in water,so the gas should drop to the ground.
Wright cannot believe what he hears from the witnesses.
The problem with water spray system is that it was undersized
and water sprays didn't reach the height of the release.
Not only did water bypass protective measures and trigger the MIC reaction
but the 3 fundamental safety systems designed to contain an escape of gas either couldn't cope or weren't working.
It's a mind boggling sequence of failures that points to a pattern of negligence.
Michael Wright begins investigating plant management and the parent company's corporate dealings.
The plant was losing money.
They had underguard an expansion, 7 years earlier they had misjudged their market
they weren't selling nearly as much pesticide as they expected to,
in that kind of situation there is always pressure from parent corporation
to cut costs.
Workers tell Wright as their emphasis on safety slackened, small leaks became common place and sometimes deadly.
There were atleast 5 chemical accidents in plant between 1981 and 1984.
There was a leak in Dec 81,that injured 3 workers,one of whom died...There were plenty of warnings that something was missing.
The cost cutting began with the missing slipline.
That slipline was critical in the accident.had that been there,there never would have been an accident.
To Wright's amazement this critical piece of safety equipment was left out time and again because of staff cutbacks
A supervisor who should have been responsible had been laid off.
Faulty gauges meant no one noticed when the reaction started,
throughout the plant the instruments were out of caliberation.
The vent gas scrubber wasn't working,but even if it had been,it could never have cleaned such a large amount of deadly MIC.
The Vent Gas Scrubber was only capable of dealing with small amount of gas leaks but nobody thought to design it for a big accident
and nobody wanted to spend the money.
For 2 months failure to replace a broken pipe
when the flare tower couldn't burn any escaping gas.
Workers said that it would have taken about 2 hours to put a new piece of pipe back in
and Union Carbide US had told their Indian counterparts that their emergency water hoses weren't up to the job.
Union Carbide concerned hadn't installed water spray systems.
They hadn't done it.
Wright now suspects Warren Anderson sabotage theory is nothing but a smoke spring.
Union Carbide never really presented any credible evidence.
The sabotage theory was clearly Union Carbide trying to cover its cracks.
Michael Wright sees an alternative explanation for the catastrophy at Bhopal.
In a factory working with one of the world's most toxic chemical,massive cost cutting invited.. a massive disaster.
By 1984,Union Carbide has cut the equipment of 1.25 million dollars from Bhopal's annual running cost.
But the plant is still losing money.
All the evidence points to an incredible chain of failures and negligence by Union Carbide management.
A lot of things had to go wrong in Bhopal.But they all went wrong. And they all went wrong
because management made fundamental decisions
to save money at the expense of safety.
Wright has now completely discard sabotage.This catastrophy was the company's fault.
Everytime we learn about a system that had been shutdown,it could have stopped the accident
you just shake your head because they they didn't spend
a little bit of money and a little bit of time.Thousands of people died.
Now the investigation is complete we can replay the exact chain of accident scenarios
that overtook Bhopal factory and killed 3 thousand people on that fatal night in Dec 1984
Three and a half hours from disaster
a shift worker begins a routine cleaning operation
but pipes are clogged and he floods the system,
water gushes through recently installed shortcut straight towards giant underground storage tanks full of a highly volatile pesticide ingredient MIC.
Metal plates that should isolate the chemical are missing.
En route to the tank,water collects traces of ions from rust inside the ageing pipes
2 hours 15 min from disaster
The first drop of water seeps through a broken valve into a tank E6 10 containing 42 tons of liquid MIC far more than is recommended.
The water and ion mixture triggers a violent and unstoppable reaction within the MIC.
With no refrigeration to keep it cool its temperature rockets
1 hour from disaster
The liquid MIC begins to boil,workers now gas and report it but its dismissed as a minor leak.
As more and more liquid turns to gas pressure soars in the tank.
In the control room,faulty gauges show little change until suddenly readings shoot up the scale
35 mins from disaster
Control room operator Suman Dey witness the runaway reaction first hand as the spiralling pressure blows the tank safety valve and cracks its concrete storage bunker
High pressure MIC percolates into the Vent Gas Scrubber
workers expect it to neutralise the escaping gas but its out of action
even if it was working,its only designed to cope with minor leaks.
Tons of superheated MIC rush straight through it
15 mins from disaster
The toxic gas streams pass the flare tower a backup safety system that should burn off escaping gas
its also out of action and lethal MIC bursts into the night sky
10 mins from disaster
In a last ditch attempt to neutralise the escaping gas plant workers turn on emergency water cannons
they are woefully underpowered and cannot reach the venting gas
1 am Dec 3rd 1984
A lethal cloud of MIC gas one of the most toxic substances on earth,descends on Bhopal and its half a million residents,
killing 3000 people,in a matter of hours
In addition to the immediate deaths the Indian Government says that further 15000 later died,as a direct result of the disaster
To this day,more than half a million has suffered ill health from inhaling the gas or from the knock-on effects of continual illusion.
People die at a rate of 2 or 3 a week even 27 years later from the delayed effects of the,of the release
Following the disaster,Union Carbide abandoned the plant
It remains standing,a rusting hulk that casts a permanent shadow over the city of Bhopal
The factory has never been cleaned up and ground water studies from the site shows evidence of chronic toxicity
5 years after the disaster,Union Carbide America agreed to pay a compensation package of 470 million dollars,only around 600 dollars per victim
As part of the deal,the corporation demanded immunity from any future criminal charges
Former CEO Warren Anderson now in his 90s retired to Long Island,New York
In 2010,8 former managers from Union Carbide India were convicted of death by negligence and fined 2000 dollars each
and to this day,the company insists that catastrophy was an act of sabotage
The people living in Bhopal are survivors of enormous courage,enormous humanity their story
should be told
and the loved ones who they lost should always be remembered...
and IRONY is that Union Carbide(now DOW CHEMICALS) is sponsoring "greenest ever OLYMPICS" in 2012 in London...