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Even as one of the country’s biggest ever international Fire safety conferences viz. Fire Combat 360, kicked off on the evening of the 8th of March to a rousing response from an appreciative and alert audience in the city of Mumbai, tragedy was around the corner. That very night saw a devastating fire tragedy in nearby Palghar when a boiler blast in a factory barely 20 odd kilometers from one of the country’s major nuclear facilities located in Tarapur, could be heard as far as 10 to 15 kilometres away. At that time, one watchman had already died and some 13 to 14 injured were reported. “The Boisar chemical reactor blasted at around 11 pm on Thursday night and spread like a wildfire to the other industrial units of the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation in Palghar, killing at least 3 and injuring 20 others,” was the headline that greeted Mumbai on the morning of the 10 th of March. The Boisar police have registered a case of accidental death after three charred bodies were recovered from the industrial unit at the E-plot of Boisar MIDC. According to the police, the three dead were identified as Pintu Kumar Gautam, Janu Adaria and Alok Kumar. All three of them were workers.

MACABRE HILARITY IN ‘SAFETY ADVICE’ WHICH ACTUALLY WORKED

It is difficult, indeed insensitive to seek humor in a tragedy like this one. And yet the sheer extent of callousness and ignorance on the part of people, sometimes holding responsible positions, evoked some black humor in this case. As per the report of ‘Times of India’ , 10 th March: When an explosion took place at Novaphene Specialities Pvt Ltd on Thursday night, over a dozen daily-wage labourers were working in the chemical unit without any safety gear. The death toll in the fire could have been higher if not for a rudimentary instruction the young labourers had got from the experienced ones: “Run for life if you hear an explosion or see a flame.”

And that’s exactly what Dinesh Kumar (25), who was working at Novaphene for the past six months, and others did. Kumar, who sustained head injuries caused by splinters, said he had no idea that he was working amidst highly flammable materials. “We just ran out on hearing the explosion,” said the labourer undergoing treatment at Vikas hospital in Boisar. Most of the labourers were working overtime on Thursday night when the incident took place and were to go home by Friday afternoon.