Saroj Bhattacharjee, 81, calls it the “biggest trauma” of his life.
The Edmonton man was a maintenance engineer at Union Carbide in Bhopal, India, in 1984, when the toxic gas methyl isocyanate leaked from a storage tank. It’s estimated roughly 36 tonnes of the deadly fumes spewed into the city’s air from the pesticide plant.
40 years ago, on Dec. 2 and 3, is when the tragedy took place — eventually killing thousands. More than half a million suffered injuries, with thousands sustaining severe or permanently disabling harm. Long-term, some people became blind or contracted cancer.
Bhattacharjee, who continues to work as an engineer in the oil and gas industry, says he was initially alerted at night by neighbours.
“[They] pounded on our door just to ask what to do. What has happened? I told them that. ‘Just go inside your house … close all the windows, all of the air entries into the house.'”
The next morning, says Bhattacharjee, is when he got in his vehicle and drove close to the plant and saw things he wishes he never did — images that will stay with him forever.
“People were running around … vomiting. People were coughing, and then I thought, ‘Okay, let me go to the nearby hospital.’ Dead bodies are all wrapped in white clothes and laid on the ground,” he said.
Bhattacharjee’s son, Shuvo, — who now lives in Windsor, Ont. — was 11 when it happened. He remembers it being a normal night at first.
“We could smell the gas. After that, it was a little bit of a blur because you could see there was a road in front of our house that connected out of the city of Bhopal to another town nearby, and the road was full of people walking in silence, riding trucks, riding cars, whatever they could find. They were just leaving.”
In 2010, seven former senior employees of Union Carbide’s Indian subsidiary were convicted of “death by negligence” for their roles in the Bhopal gas tragedy.
Saroj Bhattacharjee says his younger son, Shamik, who also lives in Edmonton, was quite affected by the incident.
“I didn’t know how. Maybe he came out to see what is happening outside. He had a problem of respiratory trouble for quite some time.”
According to Bhattacharjee, it’s history that should not be repeated.
“These are avoidable things, not the natural calamity, which we have very little control. This is purely man-made negligence, organizational disinterest, and the main motto of making profit at the cost of safety for the employees, for the people surrounding the community. That is preventable.”
Shuvo Bhattacharjee says the gas leak disaster is also a reminder that days such at that should not be glorified, either.
“Such incidents teach us that no matter how good you make a system, something can always go wrong, and we should never play that down. From a technical perspective, from a risk perspective, that stays the same.”
He says keeping the memory alive, however, is also of the utmost importance — especially in such diverse countries as Canada.
“We are such an international country that even a little city like Bhopal, which probably most Canadians have never heard of, has a connection to us in Canada.”
