Risk and Safety Blog

Train To Bhopal

In Dec. of 2004, I attended a conference in India to commemorate 20 years of Bhopal. After the conference, a few attendees took a train to Bhopal to visit the plant site. While in Bopal I visited my aunt - her name is Maya. She was in her house in Bhopal on the day of the tragedy…luckily her family was not affected. However, I distinctly remember seeing video footage of folks who were affected from the tragedy and it was horrifying.

It took the Indian courts merely 25-years to reach a verdict on the Bhopal case. Many, including Aunt Maya, would say this is too little too late. Here’s a video http://tiny.cc/Bhopal_CNN) from CNN expressing similar sentiments:

Will There Be Another Bhopal?

What bothers me is the likelihood of another mega-incident.Increasing industrial activities, particularly in countries such as India and China, and proximity of facilities to the neighboring population does present a significant potential for major incidents.

At the same time there appears to be increased awareness with respect to process safety particularly in petrochemical and chemical facilities in various countries. The increased reliability of risk mitigation measures that are being employed in the process industry for high consequence incidents considerably minimize the occurrence of catastrophe. I also anticipate that industrial insurance providers in various parts of the world will contribute to increased risk mitigation measures implementation.

All the above factors indicate increased risk management practices and lead me to believe that likelihood of major incidents will reduce in the coming decades.

Then again…only time will tell.