Gas leak spreads panic in Mangalagiri
Hyderabad   15-Dec-2010

Residents of Srilakshminarasimha colony in the temple town of Mangalagiri ran out of their homes on Tuesday afternoon when liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) leaked from an overturned oil tanker. Panic gripped the entire Mangalagiri town for over three hours till the rescue teams capped the leaking gas.

Senior officials from IndianOil, revenue and police reached the spot soon after receiving the information and evacuated nearly 400 families from the colony on a war-footing. Luckily, the fire-fighting teams that were rushed from the nearest IOC centre at Tadepalle successfully averted a major tragedy.

The incident took place when the oil tanker from IOC refilling centre at Tadepalli, 4 km from Mangalagiri, overturned on the highway and gas started leaking. It was on its way to Chennai. Locals came to know about the mishap only after the leaked gas spread to the colony while both the driver and cleaner fled from the spot fearing a blast.

Upon information, police asked the electricity department officials to immediately switch off power supply. While the colony has a population of over 2,000, nearly one thousand people, including children, were at their homes at the time of the mishap. With police sounding an alert, the people ran away from their homes to reach safer places in the town.

Soon, fire tenders and firefighting experts reached the spot to cap the gas. It took nearly three hours for the expert teams to bring the situation under control. The IOC team of officials pumped soap water into areas where the gas leaked to avert fire mishaps before transferring the remaining gas into another tanker through separate pipelines. Sources said the tanker had 17 tonnes of gas stock at the time of the mishap.

Senior IOC official Purnachandra Rao said timely presence of experts at the site prevented a major accident.

Earlier, traffic on both sides of the national highway was stranded for nearly 10 km stretch. Traffic on the busy Vijayawada highway was paralysed for over three hours as the cops did not allow any vehicular movement till the place was declared a ‘safe zone’ by IOC officials.