Another fire erupts at AP gas refinery

Hours after the devastating refinery fire in Andhra Pradesh was ''controlled'' on Tuesday, another major fire broke out in a kerosene storage tank at the 250-acre complex.

The billowing clouds of black smoke and the raging fire made rescue operations virtually impossible, and at least a hundred people are feared to be trapped in the smouldering debris at the Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited's Visakhapatnam refinery.

While government officials claimed that only 41 people perished in the mishap, a senior refinery official told Rediff On The NeT, ''Most of the 180-odd, who were supposed to report for work on the fateful Sunday, might be trapped in the debris of the canteen building.... Had it been not been a holiday, the human loss would have been mind-blowing.''

Expressing his inability to give the exact death toll, City Police Commissioner R P Meena said, ''The human loss can be ascertained only after the debris of the canteen and administrative buildings is cleared.''

Another top police official said the condition of some of the 50 injured was grave.

Considering the gravity of the situation, the central government has ordered a high-level probe into the incident. However, Union Petroleum Minister Janeshwar Mishra on Tuesday turned down the demand for a judicial probe.

''The probe ordered by Prime Minister Inder Kumar Gujral should bring out the truth,'' the minister said, dodging media queries on how another oil company chief -- Cochin Refinery Chairman and Managing Director K L Kumar -- can be assigned the task of investigating the tragedy.

As for the impact of the blast, eyewitnesses told Rediff On The NeT that even an earthquake measuring eight on the Richter scale would not have caused so much damage.

As many as 19 tanks storing fuel like LPG, petrol and kerosene with a total capacity of over 1.40 billion kilo litres were destroyed and 30 multi-storeyed buildings reduced to a rubble in the mishap.

It is not known if the five remaining fuel tanks, reported to be safe now, would encounter the same fate due to the second fire which erupted soon after the first inferno was ''controlled'' by experts from Bombay and Narasapur.

Equipped with sophisticated machines and 55 tonnes of foam and helped by local fire staff and navy personnel, the team had almost put out the fire. The thick black smoke emanating from the refinery had also subsided.

More than a dozen hi-tech cranes have been deployed to clear the debris and voluntary organisations and the district police personnel are working round the clock to remove the dead bodies.

Mishra, his deputy T R Balu and Union Rural Development Minister K Yerram Naidu made an aerial survey of the affected area. Addressing the media later, they said the inquiry committee will submit its report in a month. The committee's recommendations will be implemented in full, the ministers added.

Claiming that the refinery was safe, Balu said all the three refinery units -- refinery processing, LPG bottling and LPG marketing division -- will achieve full operational capacity in six to eight weeks.

Replying to questions on the alleged failure to take precautionary measures, Balu said the present accident was the biggest refinery mishap in the country in the last 40 years. ''It is wrong to say that the ministry or the refinery officials had not taken sufficient precautionary measures to prevent the accident.''

He said the accident could not be anticipated as the imported LPG was odourless and it was difficult to detect the vapour cloud that had caused the blast.

However, several enviromental experts rejected the minister's claims, stating that, despite repeated reminders, the government hadfailed to take any action. ''We had warned the government that another Bhopal was in the making even before the November 1996 tragedy occurred, claiming two lives. If the much-needed safety measures were introduced, even that mishap would not have occurred,'' said an Andhra University professor.

The statement made by some HPCL sources confirmed this. ''We are thinking of replacing the safety device in each of the storage tanks and spheres,'' they said. The step seems to have come in the wake of reports that the leakage at the coupling between the ship and the pipeline had been there for quite sometime.

UNI and M S Shanker in Visakhapatnam

EARLIER REPORT:
80 feared killed in AP LPG blast