HYDERABAD: Mopping the floor clean could save lives. More so in a factory like Gulf Oil Corporation (GOC) where a high explosive like Pentaerythritol Tetra Nitrate (PeTN) is manufactured.

The November 2003 blast claiming lives of nine GOC workers could have been averted if only the floor was mopped clean. The factory management did not pay attention to accumulation of dry PeTN on the floor, which exploded when an aluminium spool was dropped on the floor.

This was the finding of Justice G. Radhakrishna Rao, who probed into the blast on GOC premises in Balanagar.

Justice Rao, who headed the one-man commission of inquiry, also found other lapses on the part of the GOC, in not maintaining records of daily issue of dry PeTN from the stores to the detonating fuses section. A full-fledged fire station should be set up on the factory premises, it suggested.

Mock drills

The mandatory conduct of mock drills and imparting fire fighting training every three months in industries was not being implemented, it was found. More over, every industry is expected to carry out a third party audit every year by an independent agency. After the commission pointed out the glaring fire safety inadequacies, the fire service conducted a survey in 1,330 industries in Ranga Reddy district and the findings are shocking.

About 92 per cent of industries never took up a third party audit and nearly 96 per cent never had a disaster management plan ready. More than 22 per cent did not did not even prohibit smoking on the premises. "Though the percentage of industrial fire accidents is less — at 4 per cent — the magnitude of the loss is very high," points out Director-General of Fire Services Alok Srivastava. According to him, there were 236 industrial fire accidents in the State in 2004-2005 out of which 17 were in Ranga Reddy and 13 in Hyderabad.

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