The catastrophe befell within the industrial metropolis of Surat in Gujarat state at about 4 a.m. The staff had been within the mill when some chemical substances had been dumped close by, police and a hearth officer mentioned.
“Chemicals had been being illegally discharged from a tanker right into a rivulet near the mill, which probably reacted with one other chemical within the water and created poisonous gasoline,” the chief fireplace officer of Surat Municipal Corporation, Basant Pareek, advised Reuters.
“The staff inhaled the gasoline and began feeling suffocation. When we reached the scene, the employees had been discovered collapsed on the street of their try to flee.”
Six staff died whereas 23 folks had been hospitalized, seven in vital situation and on ventilators, Pareek mentioned.
Senior police official Sharad Singhal mentioned officers had been investigating however had but to make any arrests.
“This was not an unintended gasoline leakage. Hazardous chemical substances had been being discharged when the incident befell,” he mentioned.
India suffered the world’s worst industrial catastrophe in 1984 when methyl isocyanate gasoline leaked from a pesticide manufacturing unit owned by American Union Carbide Corporation within the metropolis of Bhopal, killing greater than 5,000 folks.