2nd December 1984: The Bhopal gas tragedy took place

YB WEB DESK. Dated: 12/2/2020 11:38:44 AM

Around midnight on December 2, 1984 . . . I went to bed. Before I fell asleep, I felt a sharp pricking sensation in my throat. I thought I was going to catch a cold. But a few minutes later, I was coughing and had difficulty breathing. I then heard loud sounds from outside. Looking out of the window, I saw people running. And then I smelt a very strong, foul odour. I moved back to the bedroom to find my wife coughing too. I realised there was something terribly wrong . . . and called the police control room. When someone responded, I could hear him gasp for breath and cough. “What’s happened?” I asked. “Sahab, Union Carbide ki gas tankee phoot gayee hai. Dam ghut raha hai. (Sir, a Union Carbide gas tank has exploded. I am suffocating).” -- Raajkumar Keswani in the Outlook magazine The events narrated in this terrifying account by Keswani, a journalist working in Bhopal in the 1980s, marked the beginning of one of the world’s biggest industrial disasters on the intervening night of December 2 and December 3, 1984. The “very strong, foul odour” was that of the deadly methyl isocyanate (MIC) gas and other poisonous substances that had leaked from the American firm Union Carbide’s pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, killing around 3,800 people, according to government estimates. Other estimates have put the death toll at a minimum of 8,000 within two weeks of the disaster, and an equal number in the years to follow. Besides the thousands who died, more than 5 lakh people were affected by the gas leak. It’s not as if there were no prior warnings. Keswani himself had written two articles in local publications in the years before the tragedy on the dangers that the plant posed to residents of Bhopal, but “[n]o one listened to me” On that cold December night, terrified residents tried to run away from the site but thousands were dead by the morning hours. Mass funerals and cremations were carried out, and bodies dumped into the Narmada river.The New York Times reported on December 3, 1984: “Witnesses said thousands of people had been taken to hospitals gasping for breath, many frothing at the mouth, their eyes inflamed. The streets were littered with the corpses of dogs, cats, water buffalo, cows and birds…Doctors from neighbouring towns and the Indian Army were rushed to the city…where hospitals were said to be overflowing with the injured. Most of the victims were children and old people who were overwhelmed by the gas and suffocated…” According to witnesses, a “densely populated.

 

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