People's Democracy

One Sunday Night In The City

LATE on Sunday evening, December 2, 1984 during routine maintenance operations in the Methyl Iso Cyanate (MIC) plant, a large quantity of water entered one of the storage tanks containing 60 tonnes of MIC. This triggered off a runaway reaction resulting in a tremendous increase of temperature and pressure. Little before midnight, a deadly cocktail of MIC, Hydrogen Cyanide, Mono Methyl Amine and other chemicals was carried by a northerly wind to the neighbouring communities. Over the next couple of hours close to 40 tonnes of the chemicals spread over the city of about one million people covering an area of 40 square kilometres.

People woke up surrounded by a poison cloud so dense and searing that they could hardly see. With their eyes stinging and their throats burning, hundreds of thousands of people ran screaming for their lives. As they gasped for breath, the effects of the gas grew even more suffocating. The gases burned the tissues of their eyes and lungs and attacked their nervous system. People lost control of their bodies. Urine and faeces ran down their legs. Some began vomiting uncontrollably. Others were wracked with seizures and fell dead. The gases irritated people’s lungs into producing so much fluid that their lungs were filled with it, “drowning” them in their own body fluids.

People had no way of knowing it but they would have been safer running against the wind towards the factory or by simply covering their faces with a wet cloth. Nobody told them. The factory’s emergency siren had been switched off. Not until the gas was upon them, filling their mouths and lungs, did people know of the danger. Union Carbide’s plant manager was woken at 1.30 am as the gas was still pouring over the stricken neighbourhoods. The first official notification by the Union Carbide management was done at 3 am when they informed police officials that the leak had been plugged. In fact it had not been; there just wasn’t any gas left in the tank. By 4.30 am the manager was in his office telling reporters that his safety measures were the best in the country. Another Carbide official was telling a newsman “Nothing has happened. Can’t you see us alive?” Barely 100 yards away, dead bodies lay on the ground outside the factory gates. 

(From a publication of Sambhavana Trust)