One dies in Hetero Visakhapatnam Plant blast
Vishakhapatnam - A reactor blast that occurred at Hetero Drugs at Nakkapalle in Visakhapatnam district injured 5 people from which one of them is dead. The blast occurred at around 7:30 pm on Wednesday evening. The condition of two of the injured is said to be critical. Fire tenders rushed to the scene and doused the fire. Following the incident, the management stopped the operations in the plant.
The two among the five persons were critical and one person identified as A. Sai Ram was dead while undergoing treatment. The other person Gangadhar is said to be in a critical state.
The senior officers from the Department of Factories told the Hindu that the Hetero unit at Nakapalle is into manufacturing active pharmaceutical ingredients (API) or bulk drugs for the domestic and semi-regulatory markets. The officers told that on Wednesday night, after neutralizing the material in one reactor by adding some amount of nitric acid the material was transferred to another reactor.
Deputy Inspector of Factories, Mr. Narayana Rao reported to the Hindu that the process was complete but we suspect that some amount of material was stuck in the bottom pipeline after the transfer. As per norms, the temperature to store the material is minus 20 degrees Celsius. But as per our initial assessment, the material was stuck in the pipeline for about one-and-a-half hours and during this period the temperature would have shot up and this might have triggered the blast.
On a sustained agitation and a complaint filed by the members from the neighboring villages, National Green Tribunal (NGT) has ordered an inquiry. The residents from about nine neighboring villages, including from those that are predominantly fishing villages had complained that the company has surreptitiously laid a pipeline for a distance of about 4km for pumping its effluents into the sea. They complained of damage to the environment, depletion of fish caught, and groundwater pollution said V. S. Krishna of Human Rights Forum.
Meanwhile, CITU(Centre of Indian Trade Unions) leaders demanded that the company management provide information to workers and pay compensation to the families of the injured. This was not the first time that such an incident had occurred in the unit so the unit had also witnessed an explosion in 2016, killing one employee and injuring two others. The CITU district president G. Koteswara also demanded that the State government should immediately conduct a safety audit of all industries.
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