Bhopal sabotage still considered possibility

Press, 5 December 1985, Page 71

Bhopal sabotage still considered possibility

By,

STEVEN R. WEISMAN,

“New York Times,” (through NZPA)

Bhopal, India A black storage tank sits on a platform at the oncebustling Union Carbide pesticide factory at Bhopal in India, inside is about 13 tonnes pf residue from a chemical reaction that spewed poison into the air and caused the worst industrial accident in history. One year after the Bhopal gas leak that killed at least 2000 people and injured 200,000 others on December 2 and 3, 1984, the 32ha Union Carbide compound is shut down, overgrown with weeds and eerily silent. A 31m high jumble of scaffolding and pipes that looks like a gigantic erector set towers above the place where methyl isocyanate, a toxic chemical known as MIC, was being manufactured. Atop it is a riisting chimney through which toxic gas escaped.

Since the accident, Indian investigators and Union Carbide officials have barred outsiders from the site.

But late in November, two senior managers of the plant and the chief Indian Government investigator conducted a three-hour tour. “No-one on the face of this earth knows for certain what happened,” said Mr Zrij Shukla, chief investigator for the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation.

Asked if the cause of the disaster baffled him, Mr Shukla replied with a grin, “An angler who is waiting for his fish shows patience. I am that angler. I am neither bored nor baffled.”

The tour was doubly unusual because the two officials who helped conduct it are top supervisors of Union Carbide India, Ltd, — a subsidiary of the Union Carbide Corporation of Danbury, Connecticut, which has a 50.9 per cent ownership in the plant. The officials, who generally have not commented on the accident, were Messrs J. Mukund, the plant manager, and S. P. Choudhary, production manager. They were arrested by Indian authorities last December on criminal charges, along with Mr Warren Anderson, chairman of the parent company. Mr Anderson was detained briefly but then released on bail and allowed to return to the United States.

Messrs Shukla and Choudhary are free on bail but must obtain permission from the authorities before leaving Bhopal. They and other Carbide officials deny the criminal charges.

“We are not very happy about the arrests,” said Mr Mukund, aged 46, an engineer trained at Cambridge University and the Massachussetts Institute of Technology. “But we hope that when people find out what happened, the stigma will not be permanent.” The morning of the leak, Mr Mukund recalled, he was at the plant by 2 a.m., about two hours after workers said the gas started leaking. “All of us inhaled a very substantial amount of MIC,” he said. “But I am experiencing no breathing difficulties I did not have before.”

The so-called initiating incident of the disaster was

something that caused the methyl isocyanate to heat up suddenly in its storage tank, burst through a safety valve and eventually escape into the air.

Some scientists say the gas could have done this spontaneously, or as a result of another chemical being introduced into the tank.

But the widely accepted view is that water got in and caused the reaction.

Many experts believe the water came in because workers earlier had been carelessly washing filter equipment near a pipe connected to the storage tank.

But like senior Carbide officials in the United States, Messrs Shukla and Chaudhary subscribe to the theory that it was introduced into the tank deliberately. “We cannot find any other way it could have happened,” said Mr Choudhary, who has been working at the plant for six years. “But we are still open if someone can suggest how else it could have been done.”

Mr Mukund said, however, that there was “no direct evidence” of sabotage and “no reason to believe” the culprit was a Sikh terrorist, as some Carbide people in the United States have suggested. Some legal experts say that an act of sabotage, as opposed to company negligence, could reduce the parent company’s liability. During the tour, Mr Mukund showed where he said he felt the sabotage could have taken place: a group of six separate pipes leading into the methyl isocyanate storage tank, two for nitrogen and four for methyl

isocyanate circulation.

He said that “it would have been easy” to use a hose to connect water from a nearby pipe to the nitrogen pipe or to a valve on the tank itself. About 4.5 metres behind the tank area, one also can see three other pipes — a green one labelled “water,” a white one labelled “air,” and a black one labelled “nitrogen”.

A different branch of the nitrogen pipe goes into the methyl isocyanate storage tank.

Some of those who studied the accident have suggested that a worker connected water to the nitrogen pipe by mistake. But Mr Mukund pointed to the nitrogen pipe, showing it was a 13cm pipe, and the water pipe, which was about 18cm.

“No employee would confuse these pipes,” he said. “No-one familiar with our colour code or who could read would confuse them. But if there were sabotage, this would be the easiest place.”

Mr Mukund emphasised he was not saying who might have done the sabotage, but he dismissed the suggestion that Carbide employees were too unsophisticated to think of the idea

of mixing water with methyl isocyanate as a way of disrupting the system. In fact, he said there were “routine communications” to tell workers to remove water from all equipment or solutions coming in contact with methyl isocyanate because the two substances create solids that “plug” the system. Messrs Mukund, Choudhary, and Shukla also showed the area where the workers were washing the filter equipment near a pipe that was connected to the methyl isocyanate storage tank.

Many workers are known to have testified that this is where the water leak occurred.

They cited the failure of the workmen to seal the pipe connected to the storage tank with a special stainless steel disk required by regulations. The washing activity is 61 metres away from the storage tank, and it is connected by a circuitous duct known as the relief valve vent header.

Mr Choudhary said the reason he doubted that water leaked from this spot is that there was not enough pressure for the water to have gone through 152 metres of pipe.