Pics by Rons Bantwal

Mumbai, Jul 15: The leakage of chlorine gas at the Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT) warehouse at Hay Bunder near Sewri sent waves of panic among thousands of residents and port workers who woke up in the wee hours of Wednesday morning to breathlessness, nausea and coughing fits.

More than 120 people —including students of a nearby maritime college, labourers, port workers, and fire-fighters involved in rescue operations — were admitted to various city hospitals. Seventeen of those affected were in a critical condition at the time of going to press. The impact of the leak was so deadly that flora and fauna in the vicinity turned white, said officials.

Chlorine is a hazardous element. Sustained exposure to it at high concentrations can lead to corrosion of lung linings and skin.

What's shocking is that the cylinder from which chlorine leaked out, along with another 140 such canisters, had been lying abandoned at the MbPT with no precautions or safeguards whatsoever. Given the total absence of safety precautions, it is only providence that a tragedy of a bigger magnitude hasn't happened yet.

It was only during rescue and relief operations that the authorities realised that as many as six cylinders, including the one that was compromised, contained chlorine gas. Each cylinder weighed a tonne. The MbPT has launched an enquiry as to why the cargo was left unattended and exposed to the elements in such a careless manner.

TOI has learned that the cylinders had been abandoned by an importer over a decade ago in 1997. Since then, the MbPT has been unsuccessfully trying to sell off the cylinders. According to MbPT officials, the leak occurred at around 3am from one of the 141 cylinders stored on the storage plot, which is adjacent to the LBS College of Advanced Maritime Studies and Research. A vast expanse of sea and vacant land lies on the other side.

An MbPT fire station located on the warehouse got a call from a security guard around 3.13am. "I was sitting with another security guard when we started having difficulty breathing. On close observation, we found gas emanating from a huge pile of cylinders. We alerted the fire brigade," said Praveen Mohite, the guard employed by a private agency that is in charge of security at the warehouse.

For over six hours, rescue and relief teams struggled to bring the situation under control. It took fire officials, BMC's disaster management team and experts from Herdillia Chemicals, Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilizers, Century Rayon and Mutual Aid Response Group more than six hours to identify, seal and clamp the leaking and other cylinders.

"There was a cloud of chlorine that was spreading because of the leakage. Armed with breathing apparatus, our fire-fighters created water curtains, thus diluting the gas. The air pressure thus created helped push the clouds of chlorine towards the sea," said chief fire officer Uday Tatkare.

The neutralisation process of the remaining chlorine-filled cylinders was carried out by the National Disaster Response Force, which arrived on the scene only in the afternoon. "Every establishment that uses chlorine in a large way ought to have a tank for neutralisation purposes to specifically handle such circumstances, but there was no such apparatus at MbPT," said Tatkare. Many staffers and labourers TOI spoke to said safety guidelines were not maintained at the facility.