It was something that the Fire and Rescue Services personnel of Vellore district have not witnessed earlier. In the early hours of Saturday, they waded through a path filled with effluents up to their knees to rescue persons trapped in the wall collapse of a Secured Landfill Facility at Ranipet.
Nine members of the Fire Services Station at Ranipet SIPCOT rushed to the SIDCO Industrial Estate, after receiving a call at 1.30 a.m. about the incident. Another 14 to 15 members from the nearby fire stations of Ranipet and Arcot joined them in the operation.
“The odour emanating from the slush made it difficult for us. We somehow managed, as it was an open area. We wore masks due to the presence of chemical agents in the slush and wore gum boots as we had to walk through the slush all the way to the spot,” said G. Thandavan, Station Fire Officer, Ranipet SIPCOT station. Lack of lighting added to their difficulties. “It was like a tsunami. The bodies were literally buried under the slush and it made searching hard. We had to watch every step we took and moved slowly,” he added.
The site is nearly two kilometres away from the Ranipet SIPCOT fire station, said a member of the rescue team. The rescue team personnel said that they had never encountered such a massive industrial accident in Vellore before. “There was knee-deep slush deposited in the area. Our legs started to itch. We recovered all the bodies by morning but stayed on till afternoon to see if our help was needed,” a team member said.
Meenakshi Vijayakumar, deputy director of Fire Services, North Western Region, Vellore, and S. Murugesan, district officer, Fire and Rescue Services, Vellore, advised the team on rescue operations.
Mr. Thandavan said they recovered 10 bodies and rescued one person from the site. “The rescued person, Ravi, had managed to climb up to the top of a building. He was caught there for seven hours and we brought him down using a ladder,” he added.
