New Delhi:
For days, India watched in horror as the flames leapt higher and wider into the air. At least ten people were killed, and more than a hundred injured in October last year, in a fire at the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) depot on the outskirts of Jaipur.
On Friday, nine Indian Oil officials have been arrested for negligence. They include the man who was in charge of the IOC depot, General Manager Gautam Ghosh. "I was in no way responsible for the fire," he said to NDTV.
A leak in a petrol pipeline allegedly caused the fire. The army was called in for help as all 12 tankers at the IOC depot went up in flames - 80 lakh litres of petrol were on fire. Lakhs of villagers who lived in the area were evacuated.
It took more than a week for the fire to die out. The losses for IOC are believed to be worth 300 crores.
According to the police investigation, the fire, that started from a small leak in a valve would not have turned into such a huge inferno had the officials been vigilant. Also, basic safety systems were missing at the depot. For example, when a leak is detected, an automatic switch-off system is meant to block the oil supply to the entire unit - but this computer-operated system had stopped working three years before the fire.
After the fire began, IOC authorities made no efforts to use the public address system to warn people in the plant or neighbouring areas to evacuate the premises.
Tanks which should have been filled with water for emergencies were empty , gas masks were not available, the phone line for making emergency calls was able only to receive calls.
So far, IOC has not suspended Ghosh or other senior managers.