VISAKHAPATNAM: In the wee hours of Thursday, around 3:30 am, residents of RR Venkatapuram were jolted out of their sleep and left gasping for breath as the gas that leaked from the LG Polymers plant on the outskirts of the village spread fast and wide -- inducing nausea and breathlessness.
Some closed windows to keep away the bad smell, while many others, including the elderly and women carrying children in their arms, rushed out to get away from the village. Fearing for their lives, gripped by panic, struggling to breathe and see, several fell unconscious on the streets. Most of them had irritation in their eyes and skin.
“I don’t know what happened. There was a bad smell and when I woke up, I was in an ambulance, being shifted to a hospital,” recalled a dazed young girl aged around 12. She along with her sister and parents are undergoing treatment at the King George Hospital.
Another victim, a young housewife, said "something like smoke" spread thick and fast. "We rushed out of the house to save ourselves. I don’t know how I made it to the hospital with my family. I fainted twice,” she said, still shaking.
Several others too had a similar experience. "We saw many people running helter-skelter and some fainted on the road. I saw one person who had fallen down from the terrace. I don’t know what happened to him,” a middle-aged man recalled.
NDRF and SDRF personnel and police went house to house evacuating the people to safer places. At places, the police broke up the doors -- as some people had bolted them from within -- and brought them out.
Two people were found in a sewage canal in Venkatapuram and another in a well, foaming at the mouth. The identity of the three is yet to be established.
Police vehicles and ambulances, which rushed to the village, picked up people who fainted on the roads and shifted them to different hospitals. Several animals, mostly cattle, and even birds were found dead. Plants were found withered and discoloured.
Govind, a milk vendor in the village, recalled that as usual, he woke up early in the morning to supply milk to his customers. "I could smell the gas and see it. It was spreading like fog in the village. Suspecting trouble, I alerted my customers over phone. When I along with my parents started leaving the village, I almost fainted,” he said.
A group of youth in Venkatapuram ventured out to alert people with a cloth tied over their faces. “To the maximum extent, the entire village was evacuated in a few hours. By the time we were rushing out of the village, police and ambulances were rushing to the village,” one of them said.
Visakhapatnam West MLA Ganna Babu said when he went to the spot, he felt suffocated and found people lying unconscious on the roads. He said he could not stay there for more than two minutes and left the place in his car immediately.