Word: bhopal
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Union Carbide also made public a report compiled two years ago by three company inspectors. On a tour of the Bhopal plant in May 1982, the team had discovered ten potentially major safety deficiencies, as well as a number of other irregularities. These included a pressure relief valve on a gas storage tank that would be unable to stop a "runaway reaction" and a possibility of "accidental overfilling" of a tank holding the lethal chemical. All-or none-of those ten problems may have contributed to the recent tragedy. Company officials insisted that nine of the deficiencies had been corrected...
...Bhopal, meanwhile, the scene at Hamidia Hospital remained tense. When Ashok Bhaba, a local politician, accused two senior doctors of discharging a patient prematurely, a scuffle broke out, and 900 young doctors went on a 21-hour strike in support of their two superiors. At almost the same time, Mother Teresa visited the hospital, and the city, to bring spiritual comfort. As news of the factory's resumption began to spread, even patients who could hardly walk checked out of the hospital and joined the mass exodus. Wards that had been overflowing just one week earlier were left almost...
Doctors in Bhopal were growing increasingly concerned about the long-term effects of the chemical. Many of the early victims of the poison gas were suffering from secondary infections, especially pneumonia. Even soldiers who had arrived in the city 30 hours after the gas escaped began to develop swollen eyes and debilitating coughs. Indeed, at times last week it seemed that the Bhopal tragedy might never end. When refugees from the city arrived in the neighboring state of Uttar Pradesh, they were suspected of carrying fatally contagious diseases. In many cases, family and friends shunned them. -By Pico Iyer...
...survivors barely had time to mourn when suddenly there they were: American lawyers. Looking for business. They courted Indian legal experts over leisurely meals in New Delhi's finest hotels. They culled documents at makeshift relief offices outside the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, seeking the names of potential clients. Their motives, the U.S. lawyers insisted, were pure. As Melvin Belli, the flamboyant San Francisco attorney sometimes called the "King of Torts," put it, somewhat inelegantly, "I am here to bring justice and money to those poor little people who have suffered at the hands of those rich sons...
...lawyers, who under standard contingency-fee arrangements in the U.S. can earn 30% of the awards they win in a personal-injury case, are hoping to turn the Bhopal gas leak into the most profitable disaster ever. Mega-claims have already been brought against Union Carbide in a number of U.S. jurisdictions where the company does business. Belli is seeking $15 billion in a class action filed in Charleston, W. Va. The Santa Monica, Calif., law firm Gould & Sayre has put in a $20 billion class-action claim in New York City. Coale & Associates of Washington expects to represent thousands...