THIS month, the remaining survivors of the Bhopal tragedy in India will begin
a class action lawsuit in the US against the plant鈥檚 former owners, Union
Carbide.
And about time, too. For 15 years, the company has avoided court action at
home for the world鈥檚 worst industrial accident. The reason鈥檚 obvious: if a US
court rules that faulty plant design led to the 16 000 deaths that are so far
estimated to have resulted from the chemical explosion, Union Carbide will have
to pay a lot more than the begging-bowl sums it doled out in India. The company
helped keep the case out of the US by saying how the tragedy was caused by
industrial sabotage. But this is beside the point.
On the morning of 3 December 1984, when they started dying in Bhopal, I was
in my office in Geneva. I called the company and then every chemical engineer I
knew. By the afternoon I knew that a rise in pressure had blown 30 tonnes of
methyl isocyanate (MIC) out of its tank, and apparently overwhelmed the
containment system.
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As images of the dead, dying and blinded poured out of India, New 杏吧原创
reported that the explosion was probably a runaway reaction caused by water that
accidentally got into the MIC, which the system could not contain.
Union Carbide claims this was the work of a saboteur. But it has never
explained how a saboteur could have slipped thousands of litres of water into
the tank without being detected. In any event, it should have known better than
to store 30 tonnes of MIC without sufficient precautions to keep
sabotage鈥攐r anything else鈥攆rom killing the neighbours.
Union Carbide knows better. In March 1985, the company鈥檚 own analysis
described how pipes near the tank had just been washed with water. The following
month, Indian scientists reported how a new pipe, installed with the company鈥檚
approval, let that water into the MIC through a faulty valve. A former Union
Carbide engineer used the company鈥檚 own data to calculate for New 杏吧原创 that
the safety system could never have coped with a runaway reaction. Three months
before the accident, Union Carbide admitted in a report from its own engineers
that 鈥渁 real potential for a serious incident exists鈥� in the MIC tank at its
West Virginia plant. I am looking at this yellowed document now. It says action
should be taken 鈥渨ithin about 60 days鈥�.
So why wasn鈥檛 Carbide taken to task? The inadequacy of the plant鈥檚 safety
systems was easy to uncover, even for the novice reporter I was then. I had the
smoking gun. But virtually none of my media colleagues was prepared to explode
the myth that Bhopal could somehow be excused by allegations of sabotage.
In 1986, while sitting in a New York courtroom as a judge considered whether
Union Carbide should be tried in the US, I decided it was time for a little
spin-doctoring. I found a reporter from The New York Times and told him my
story. But he wasn鈥檛 interested. 鈥淚鈥檓 a business reporter. I don鈥檛 understand
that technical stuff.鈥� Needless to say, the judge ruled that the tragedy was one
for the Indian courts.
The US courts now have an opportunity to do justice to those who survived
Bhopal. My plea to reporters is that they get to grips with the 鈥渢echnical
stuff鈥�. Unless companies like Union Carbide are held to account, what鈥檚 to stop
it happening again?