Court Orders Arrests of Plant Mgt After 6 Die in Explosion....

We purposely choose not to name companies nor location on incidents that involve fatalities. Why? Our blog’s intention is not to place blame on either company nor worker(s), but the hope that awareness of these accidents brings education and prevention of recurrence. Here is a recent development on an incident that occurred last year. We have been following the developments and here is the recent news on this catestrophe:

In a South Asian provincial capital a judicial magistrate in heard the case one day during the week of April 21, 2019.

The police said that six employees had died due to the explosion in 2018 and they had registered (country code) [unintentional murder] case against the company’s management.

The case remained pending for a few months, until yesterday, when the court issued arrest warrants against four suspects including the company’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Production General Manager, Production Assistant Manager and Production Assistant Manager.

The magistrate reprimanded the police for using delaying tactics and ordered to change the investigation officer of the case.

Days after the explosion, one of the victims’ brother had filed a petition against company’s management. The petitioner says that the blast had occurred when the company was experimenting with something at the metal plant.

We offer our sincere condolences to the deceased workers’ families, friends, and coworkers. We have followed this story for a while and decided to post because of recent court developments.

Please note the following quote from above news article “The magistrate reprimanded the police for using delaying tactics and ordered to change the investigation officer of the case.” Initially we were doubtful of the initial police explanation that a “boiler exploded” due to employee error. Companies that cast aluminium do not typically have boilers, they have furnaces. This was a furnace explosion. 

So, how did the narrative change from employees caused the error to “company was experimenting with something” come about? It occurred because one injured worker told his relatives what had occurred prior to explosion. The injured worker told a story that made us weep.  “Few days before his death, (the injured worker) had told that the company was planning to conduct this experiment because the dedicated aluminum furnace would not work. He had assessed it to be dangerous. However, the team resolved that there were fifty-fifty chances of success and failure,” he said.

Fifty – fifty chance, a coin flip resulted in six workers being killed when the small amount of aluminium was placed in a lead furnace.

To the family members of the deceased we again offer our sincere condolences. We are at a loss of words to comfort you during your time of grief. We only pray that in the future you will remember your loved one for how they lived and not how they died. I humbly acknowledge that previous sentence is easy to write for someone who has not experienced the unimaginable pain that you are dealing with now and will deal with for the rest of your lives.

This incident will be used when to educate companies and it is our sincere hope that the next time a company tries “to conduct an experiment” they will use this catastrophe to understand what can go horribly wrong.

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