VIRUDHUNAGAR: For those injured in cracker unit blasts and those who lost their dear ones, life continues to be a living hell. R Angala Eswari, 41, who survived an explosion in 2021, still faints whenever she hears the noise of a cracker explosion.
Recalling the accident at Thanga Pandian Fireworks in Kallayar Kuruchi in February 25, 2021, in which six of her co-workers died and 21 others were injured, she says, “It was around 4.10 pm on a Thursday evening. I was working in the unit when I heard the blast and someone screamed run … run ... run. With the ground shaking under my feet and the entire campus up in smoke, I just kept running in the dark until I dashed against a barbed wire fence and fell to the ground. I fractured both my legs and injured my forehead.”
“During midnight, a few weeks ago, I heard a blast sound in my sleep and tried to run out of my house. I fell down on the steps and got injured. The physical scar is vanishing slowly, but the psychological trauma still haunts me,” says the single mother of two sons with her voice trembling.
Eswari didn’t go for any work for five months after the tragedy. But poverty and debt forced her to take up a job again in another firecracker unit. The government gave Rs 25,000 as compensation, but the owner of the firecracker unit did not give even a single rupee, she says.
P Muthuselvi (43), a mother of two primary schoolchildren and another survivor in the same accident, says her physical appearance changed completely after the accident. Her hands are still full of burn injuries and she lost the skin on her hands, neck and back. She can’t even talk continuously for five minutes. She cannot do even her household chores and her poor family is now surviving on her husband’s meagre income.
“When I was running out of the firecracker unit, a burning piece of wood that got stuck to my back, burned my hands and back. For nearly 60 days I was hospitalised. I had to undergo a separate surgery to get back movement in my hands. Government gave Rs 1 lakh aid, but the unit owner gave us nothing. The aid that I got was all spent on food and travel to the hospital, and to repay debts,” she says.
There are hundreds of such victims waiting for justice across the district, and they all have heartrending tales to share. The hapless souls are carrying the cross for someone else’s guilt and greed. A crime for which the State is equally culpable if not more. Virudhunagar district has 10 fire stations and there is one in every 25 km. Each station is equipped with advanced equipment and 20 rescue services personnel man each of them.
District Fire and Rescue service personnel, who put their lives on the line to save accident victims, say preventing firecracker unit explosions is not an easy task. Finding the exact reason for the accidents is a challenge because people who are responsible for triggering the accidents most often die in the mishaps, firemen say.
Speaking to TNIE, District Fire and Rescue Service Officer K Ganesan said, “There is a huge difference between normal fire accidents and firecracker explosions, as a lot of chemicals explode together in the latter. It creates lot of heat and gas. Entire buildings would collapse. Earthmovers must be used to clear the debris before we could rescue the victims.
Our first priority is to rescue the survivors and send them to hospitals. We also retrieve dead bodies and send them for postmortem examination. It’s difficult to find out the exact reason for the explosion because most of the people who are involved are already dead.” In a district of more than 1,000 firecracker units, the accident rate is only 0.5 per cent, he says.
“Though accidents are common in all types of cracker units, they are relatively more in leased and sub-leased units, where more people are employed than the prescribed limit,” says Assistant District Fire Officer M Manikandan. Manufacturing of firecrackers must be carried out only under certain climatic conditions. Violating it is one of the major reasons for firecracker explosions, he adds.
The Supreme Court’s ban on using harmful chemicals in manufacturing crackers has crippled the industry as several units have shut shop. After the court accepted the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research-National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-NEERI) suggestion to allow use of ‘zeolite’ as an additive to cut emission by 30 to 35 per cent, a Green Fireworks Testing Laboratory was launched in August, 2018, to certify green crackers. Currently, at least 310 manufacturers have CSIR- NEERI certification.
The SC order may have paralysed the industry for now, but the industry could use the time to revisit its pernicious practices and ensure better compliance with regulations. It may also push stakeholders to explore alternative employment opportunities and more humane way of operating an industry that has claimed many a lives.
(Series concluded)