Gas starts leaking again from Visakhapatnam LG Polymers plant, locals asked to not return home for 2 days
Officials have said that it is not safe for evacuees to return home for another two days. A special NDRF team from Pune is leading the operation and will also investigate the cause of the leak.
little after midnight on Friday, gas fumes started leaking out of the tank at LG Polymers chemical plant in Andhra Pradesh’s Visakhapatnam, 22 hours after a gas leak led to a mass evacuation of the neighbouring settlements in the early hours of Thursday morning.
Officials have said that it is not safe for evacuees to return home for another two days. A special NDRF team from Pune is leading the operation and will also investigate the cause of the leak.
Visakapatnam Police Commissioner RK Meena told news agency ANI that people living beyond a 2-km radius of the chemical plant need not evacuate or come out of the roads. “No need to panic,” Commissioner RK Meena said.
“It is still leaking. Gas vapours are coming out causing uneasiness to the local people. A five-kilometre radius from the spot, people are being evacuated now,” Vishakhapatnam Fire Officer Surendra Anand had said around midnight on Friday. He had further added that buses are being arranged to ferry them to the homes of their relatives or friends outside of the risk zone.
Responding to a question about the fumes leading to an explosion, Surendra Anand had also said that no such explosion was reported either on Thursday morning or Thursday night. The fire department and NDRF were requesting people to evacuate the area as a safety precaution. The process of evacuation was underway in Adavivaram in Gopalapatnam area as per latest inputs.
A special Air India cargo flight has now brought PTBC (para-tertiary butyl catechol) from Gujarat to Visakhapatnam for the purpose of neutralising the gas leak at the chemical plant.
In fact, ten additional fire tenders, including two foam tenders were reportedly rushed to the chemical plant while ambulances were kept on standby to deal with any medical emergencies.
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Earlier on Thursday morning, a resident of RR Venkatapuram village near Visakhapatnam alerted the local police about a possible gas leak. The police and fire department sprung into action and rushed to the spot. Locals were woken from their sleep and evacuated. Exposure to styrene monomer has led to the deaths of 11 people while another 20 are believed to be on ventilator support and a total of 193 are undergoing treatment.
