The scenes of great calamity ensued in the city of Visakhapatnam early Thursday morning, a city situated in southern India, in the state of Andhra Pradesh.
It was like a scene from a dystopian film, streets filled with ensuing crowds of people, taking leave of the toxic gas that filled the city up. People were carrying the unconscious and the fatally injured in their evacuation. India’s National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) were busy with their protective suits and masks as they poured in to save lives from a terrible fate. Cadavers and nearly dead people toppled in their wake, the suffocating gas flowing out from a nearby LG Polymers plant near the city. At least eleven are now confirmed dead, hundreds more hospitalized.
The dead had no chance against the toxic gas as it came in all of a sudden, them mostly doing daily work or driving when they were poisoned by the gas.
Most went crumbling out of their autobikes, while some were killed in their sleep, according to Mekapati Goutham Reddy, minister for Industries, Commerce, and Information Technology in Andhra Pradesh. Three of the casualty has been confirmed as chilren.
1000 people were in direct exposure to the gas, 20-25 people in critical but stable condition, said Kamal Kishore from the National Disaster Management Authority. The gas is called Styrene, a basic material used to make polystyrene, fiberglass, rubber and latex.
“When we arrived on the spot a lot of people were lying on the ground unconscious and we evacuated around 1,000 people and rushed them to the hospital,” said Tej Bharath, a senior Vishakhapatnam district official.
The local police helped in the process of evacuation, however many were left to fend for their own, said local police Inspector V Ramanayya.
At least 285 people are now in hospital, said K Kanna Babu, managing director of the state’s disaster response force. But, he added, “we couldn’t immediately enter because the smell of the gas was very pungent so we had to wait for half an hour before we could go in and start evacuating people.
” The gas seems to have been leaked onto the atmosphere through the chimney, spreading like wildfire by being carried out by the ind. 10,000 people within the affected area have been identified, with 5000 having escaped the city as of this moment.
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