A second toxic gas leak prompts evacuations in southern India after 11 killed in previous days incident

India – Fire officials say toxic gas has again leaked from a LG Chem factory in southern India, the same plant responsible for a leak on Thursday (7th May) that killed at least 11 and hospitalized 300 the day before. This leak triggered a wider evacuation following the leak from the site on the
previous day.

Video from Reuters partner ANI showed emergency workers rushing to help victims on Thursday, some of whom appeared to be listless and disoriented. A number of victims lay unconscious street side, as volunteers fanned them and others rushed them into ambulances. At least one child was among the dead, a policeman at the site told ANI.

“The situation is tense,” district fire officer N Surendra Anand told Reuters early on Friday, adding people in a 5-kilometre radius of the factory were being moved out. Hours earlier, authorities had said that the situation was under control at the plant on the outskirts of Visakhapatnam.

The factory is operated by LG Polymers, a unit of South Korea’s biggest petrochemical maker LG Chem Ltd.

The commissioner of the Visakhapatnam city corporation said styrene leaked from the plant during the early hours of the morning, when families in the surrounding villages were asleep.

Srijana Gummalla, the commissioner of the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation, told Reuters that the plant had been reopened in the past few days after India relaxed a nationwide lockdown imposed on 25 March to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/at-least-nine-dead-hundreds-hospitalised-after-gas-leak-at-indian-chemical-plant