'Bhopal’s tragedy has not stopped': the urban disaster still claiming lives 35 years on
The Union Carbide
factory explosion remains the world’s worst industrial accident – but as its
dreadful legacy becomes increasingly apparent, victims are still waiting for
justice
The residents of JP Nagar have no way to escape their ghosts. This
ramshackle neighbour-hood, on the outskirts of the Indian city of Bhopal, stands just
metres away from the chemical factory which exploded just after midnight on 2
December 1984 and seeped poison into their lives forever. The blackened ruins
of the Union Carbide plant still loom untouched behind the factory walls.
It remains the world’s worst industrial disaster, which saw 40 tons of
toxic methyl isocyanate gas released into the air, killing over 3,000 instantly
and condemning hundreds of thousands to a future of prolonged pain, cancer,
stillbirths, miscarriages, lung and heart disease and the drawn out deaths of
everyone around them. “It would be better if there was another gas leak which could kill us all
and put us all out of this misery,” said Omwati Yadav, 67, who can see the
Union Carbide factory from the roof of her tiny one-room stone house, painted
peppermint green with orange doors. Her body shaking with sobs, she cries out:
“Thirty five years we have suffered through this, please just let it end. This
is not life, this is not death, we are in the terrible place in between.”....
