Those who didn’t are considered ‘lucky’ or ‘fortunate’ for having inhaled such a heavy dose of poisonous gas that they suffered a quick death. Generations after generations continue to experience the lethal effects of Methyl Isocyanate (MIC) that have made babies and teenagers disabled in many forms.
A pesticide plant in Bhopal, Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) leaked tonnes of poisonous fumes due to improper maintenance and dysfunctional alarms that failed to alert the authorities. The disaster took place at Plant Number C of the UCIL factory.
As per official record, methyl isocyanate got mixed with water used for cooling the plant. The mixture led to a generation of volumes of gases, which put tremendous pressure on Tank Number 610. The tank cover was unable to withhold the pressure of multiple gases which released close to 40 tonnes of MIC and other chemicals that engulfed Bhopal.
According to Madhya Pradesh government, 3,787 deaths related to the gas release were recorded. However, in an affidavit, submitted in 2006, the government said that the Bhopal gas leak caused 5,58,125 injuries that included approximately 3,900 severely and permanently disabling injuries.
A veteran photojournalist, Raghu Rai had reached the accident site on the morning of December 03 and he shares with us how ‘Corporate Crime’ looked like when 8.5 lakh people back then were coughing, facing breathlessness and faced eye and skin irritation:
“We took a 7 am flight in the morning and by 9 am we were at the site. As we were driving to the location, there were dead animals, bloated animals, cows, buffaloes, dogs anything on the streets as if somebody had bombed the city with chemical weapons.
We went to the hospital when all the sick and poisoned children were being brought in and a whole lot of dead bodies were lying on one side. From children to men and women were being brought in a very bad condition.”
Politicians, bureaucrats were blamed for their corrupt practices and most importantly for allowing an industry with a malfunctioning safety system, valves and lines.
Rai informs that it was very silly of them and all other journalists to not have taken any safety precautions for themselves. “None of us thought that we had to take any precautions because the incident took place in the middle of the night for some time and then it was over, so we never thought that we had to take any precaution. But what was very strange was the fact that this poisonous gas was heavier than the air and it was in the month of December when it’s fog and smog.
The reason why more than 8,000 people were killed in one go because the gas that leaked from the Union Carbide was not flying, it was crawling all over. So, anybody who came in the way of this gas, they inhaled too much gas and they died right away.”
While mass cremations and funerals were taking place in the city, children and elderly were affected by unbearable stomach pains and vomiting. MIC due to its denser nature had a tendency to fall towards the ground and therefore affected people of a smaller stature more profoundly.
It has been three decades since UCIL changed its name to Dow Chemicals but even babies of pregnant women have fallen prey to permanent impairments. We ask Rai has justice been served to the Bhopal disaster victims?
“Unlike 9/11 where 2,000 people died and every family got compensated heavily, India is an overpopulated, corrupt country where lives do not mean much to the politicians; to the bureaucrats, it is one of those very sad stories. But after the exhibitions we did and the awareness we created with the photographs, some compensation was paid to them but not enough to come out of the tragedy.”
He further says, “the truth is that this factory, Union Carbide should have been shut down several years ago because Union Carbide had lived its life and it is only in India, due to the corrupt practices, corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who allowed this factory to function long enough until the tragedy happened. It was a corrupt practice that had brought death and this was the biggest industrial blast ever in the world.”
In 1984, the hospitals weren’t well developed, the medical staff was seriously ill of qualified doctors and its resources were scarce, to say the least, to treat a population of more than 4.5 lakh. Due to unavailability of correct information, the doctors had no clue whatsoever regarding what struck the city.