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Ammonia leak causes exodus from Paradip

The survivors of cyclone-devastated Paradip are fleeing to Cuttack, Bhubaneswar and Puri fearing that a still more terrible fate might come their way if the ammonia tanks in the port burst.

The Paradip Phospate Limited and the Oswal Chemicals and Fertilisers Limited had been releasing ammonia into the atmosphere at night to prevent the tanks from bursting, said a senior government official.

The strong smell of the gas, whose release the Indian Navy says was well-regulated, and the stench of human and animal bodies have made people feel sick.

A spokesman said naval teams explained the ''controlled flare-up'' process to the workers in the port area, successfully containing the panic about the gas leak in the port area.

But says labourer Ram Nayak: ''people felt irritation in their eyes, nausea and a 'burning sensation' all over the body.'' Nayak fled the town on November 6.

The private sector OCF limited had stored 20,000 metric tons of ammonia while the PPL had around 6,000 MT of the lethal gas which it uses for the production of phosphate fertilisers.

Jagannath Mohanty, another local, is haunted by the fear of an ''accident'' similar to the Bhopal gas tragedy. ''I have survived the cyclone. But who knows the worst might come in the shape of a gas tragedy.... remember Bhopal!''

Power failure during the cyclone led to such an alarming situation as ''we had to 'vent' five to ten mm of ammonia during the night,'' said a senior PPL engineer on condition of anonymity.

Though generator sets were brought to operate the cooling towers, the pressure inside the tanks crossed the danger mark many times, B C Jena, municipality additional executive officer said.

The government authorities decided to 'vent' the gas to avert a major accident at an emergency meeting with the companies' owners, he said.

Also, the fishermen who had ventured into the sea in the past two days said that thousands of human bodies and carcasses of domestic animals and birds were being swept to the shore.

Most of the workers, especially the daily wagers, have been starving for the past 12 days as the cyclone has brought to a standstill all industries, including the port, in this town of Jagatsinghpur district.

The trawlers association spokesman said more than 1000 fishing boats and 150 mechanised boats and trawlers had sunk near the port.

At least 30 trawlers were submerged in the fishing jetty. Even in the harbour, the water rose to more than ten feet in height, said Keymer who braved the cyclone in his stranded trawler.

But project director at the District Rural Development Agency, Gangadhar Singh, claims: ''Had we not persuaded the fishermen community in Gangolia, a slum cluster, to shift to the evacuation centres, the toll would have been much higher. We had arranged five evacuation centres and sheltered around ten thousand people.''

''We had even gone to slum clusters at 0130 hours on October 28 to persuade those who were left back. But a few hundred fishermen stayed back to guard their huts and boats. They all were swept away by the 7.5 metre high tidal waves on the afternoon of October 29,'' Jena said.

Said book-stall owner Bharat Chandra Sahu: ''nobody took the warning seriously. We had experienced three major cyclones in the past ten years. Everybody thought it (the super cyclone) would be similar to the previous ones. But unfortunately it swept away everything that came its way.''

At present, authorities say it would take another two months to bring the situation to normal.

UNI

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