At least 43 persons were injured, one of whom critically, when a gas vessel exploded and resulted in a massive fire in the Hydrocarbon Cracking Unit (HCU) of a refinery plant at the Bharat Petroleum Corporation ltd (BPCl) plant at Chembur in north-east Mumbai on Wednesday afternoon.
Though initial reports had said that there were multiple blasts, informed sources within the BPCl said that there was only one massive explosion within the furnace heater of the gas vessel at the HCU which is part of the Refinery Modernisation Project (RMP) where there are in all three units.
Of the injured, 22 were treated at the BPCl’s first aid centre and allowed to go, while the remaining 21 people were taken to the Inlaks Chembur, where they are being treated for lacerated wounds and fractures. “A critically injured person is being treated at the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital,” a BPCl spokesperson said.
The explosion, which took place at around 2.45 pm, triggered a huge fire which engulfed the entire HCU. “So massive was the explosion that it could be heard up to a distance of 5 t0 6 kilometers from the plant and the glass pane windows in the nearby buildings broke. The explosion resulted in a massive fire which engulfed the entire HCU. Fortunately, the fire was confined to the HCU,” a senior BPCl official said.
Official sources attributed the explosion to the “excessive pressure” built up within the gas vessel and the malfunctioning of the relief valve. The HCU has 72 tonne hydrocarbon capacity meant for generation of petrol, diesel and other petroleum products through cracking of vacuum oil and hydro-carbons.
The blaze was initially handled by the BPCl’s in-house fire-fighting team. Subsequently, nearly two dozen fire tenders and five jumbo tankers were also rushed to the site by the Mumbai Fire Brigade to extinguish the blaze.
Fire tenders from the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, Hindustan Petroleum Corporation limited (HPCl), Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) ltd and Mazgaon Dock limited (MDlO participated in the fire extinguishing operation.
The cooling operations were continuing till late in the night. All the plants located in the RMP were depressurised and shutdown for safety reasons. “The situation has been brought under control fully and the cooling operations are currently on ,” a BPCl spokesperson said.
After the leaping fire from the affected HCU had at one stage threatened to spread across the BPCl complex and to the nearby areas, residents of the nearby Mehul village panicked, came out their homes and were staying put on the adjacent road. Initially, there was a plan to evacuate the villagers. However, the authorities dropped the plan after the fire brigade personnel from various organisations confined the blaze to HCU and brought the situation under control in the evening.
Wednesday’s was the major fire that rocked a BPCl unit in and around Mumbai. Earlier, a massive fire had broken in Tank No. 13 (Tank A) of BPCl on Butcher Island on October 6, 2017.
A three-member Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) committee that went into the October 6.2017 mishap, had among other things, had spoken about poor maintenance and almost no adherence to prescribed safety measures at the BPCl’s Butcher Island plant.