Gas Leak Kills 1, Injures 100
Chlorine gas spewed from a factory chemical tank in the port city of Bombay today, killing one person and hospitalizing more than 100 others, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
The poisonous gas leaked for nearly four hours from a storage tank at the chemical and plastics division of Calico Mills in the Chembur district of northeast Bombay, the domestic news agency said. The plant has been closed since May when employees were laid off in a labor dispute.
As clouds of smoke filled the air, people ran out of their homes onto the streets and complained of eye and throat irritations, police said. Some of them vomited.
It was India’s worst chemical leak since last Dec. 2-3, when deadly methyl isocyanate spewed from a Union Carbide pesticide plant in the central city of Bhopal, killing between 1,700 and 2,500 people.
No cause for today’s leak was immediately determined.
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