A raging fire at a natural gas field in remote northeastern India has killed two firefighters and forced nearly 8,000 people to leave their homes, an official said yesterday.
Workers have been trying to cap the well since gas started leaking nearly two weeks ago, said Tridiv Hazarika, a spokesman for government-owned Oil India, which operates the gas field in Baghjan, 550km east of Gauhati, the Assam state capital.
The well caught fire with explosions on Tuesday, when the two firefighters went missing.
Photo: AFP
Their bodies were recovered yesterday, Hazarika said.
Flames yesterday were leaping nearly 15m into the sky.
“We started evacuating people in the vicinity of the well from May 28 onward and have flown in experts from the Singapore-based company Alert Disaster Control,” Hazarika said.
About 200 engineers and workers — including the team from Singapore that arrived on Monday — are trying to stem the leak within four weeks, Oil India said.
The company also called for help from the army after locals allegedly attacked its vehicles after Tuesday’s explosion, Hazarika said.
The fire in the periphery of the well has been doused, but it has spread mainly because of the presence of natural gas condensate in the region, Hazarika said.
The thick black plume of smoke from the fire can be seen several kilometers away.
“The situation is very bad. It is spreading. I knew it was going to happen,” local environmentalist Niranta Gohain told Agence-France Presse by telephone from the site.
Environmentalists were increasingly worried about the impact of the gas leak.
Just 1km from the field is the Maguri-Motapung wetlands, an ecotourism site, while state-owned sanctuary Dibru Saikhowa National Park — renowned for migratory birds — is about 2.5km away.
Authorities had established an exclusion zone of 1.5km.
Additional reporting by AFP
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