Roughly 130 tonnes of > ammunition blew up in the fire at the Army’s Central Ammunition Depot in Pulgaon, in Maharashtra’s Wardha district, in the early hours of Tuesday. The cause is unclear, and the high toll of life and material at India’s largest ammunition dump calls for not merely an inquiry, which has already been ordered by the Army, but also a thorough appraisal of the standard operating procedures for storage and inventory. The fire began past midnight, and it is to the credit of the Quick Reaction and Fire Fighting Teams that it was eventually restricted to just one shed. By the time the fire was brought under control around 6 a.m., the authorities had also evacuated people from neighbouring villages, where the impact of the explosions set off by the fire was visible in cracked houses and debris scattered from the depot. The CAD Pulgaon is a 7,100-acre facility that is in effect the main ammunition cupboard for the Army. From standard-issue bullets to Brahmos missiles, virtually all types of ammunition purchased by the Army are stored here, feeding 14 ammunition depots and field ammunition depots across the country. These 14 depots further distribute the ammunition to field formations. The brave operation by the small group of men, at risk to their own lives, has saved India’s nuclear-armed military from a much bigger setback.
The accident also comes at a time when the shortage of War Wastage Reserve (WWR), the ammunition held in the Army inventory, is exercising military observers and the top brass. The officially sanctioned requirement is that WWR equivalent to 40 days of intense war be held by the Army. However, a CAG audit in 2015 pointed out that the >Army itself was procuring ammunition based on ‘Minimum Acceptable Risk Level’ (MARL) requirements, which averaged to WWR for 20 days of intense war. Even this MARL level was not being maintained, the audit found, with availability of ammunition, as on March 2013, below the MARL for 125 out of a total of 170 types of ammunition the Army was using. Significantly, the audit pointed to serious concerns regarding fire safety, transportation and storage. In violation of prescribed safety standards, the Army continued to transport explosives in ordinary vehicles, not enough had been done to ensure environmentally friendly and timely disposal of expired explosives, and the storage facilities were poor. Even today in Pulgaon there are sheds covered with tarpaulin. This tragedy must be a wake-up call, for the government and the military, to improve the safety of ammunition dumps and to accident-proof the transport of ammunition. Even the slightest lapse can have a devastating effect, as we are finding out this week.