Word: bhopal
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...Bhopal and Union Carbide, the tragedy continues...
...Union Carbide pesticide plant in the central Indian city of Bhopal looked as if it were being prepared for a war. All day long, giant Indian Air Force MI-8 helicopters swooped down into the area, while special Indian Army units trained in chemical warfare were airlifted to the local airport and positioned within the 72-acre compound. Around the city, more than 2,000 paramilitary troops and armed police officers were moved in to lend emergency assistance. Meanwhile, thousands of civilians were fleeing the city...
...Union Carbide, one bitter irony of the tragedy was that the Bhopal plant was at best a marginal operation because of slumping demand for pesticides. Sales of products from the facility dropped 23% last year to $17 million, and the plant was operating at less than one-third of capacity. -By Charles P. Alexander. Reported by Peter Stoler/New York
Last week in a place most Americans never heard of, more than 2,500 residents of Bhopal, India, were killed by leaking toxic gas. How deeply did we really feel that news? Numbers are always tossed up first in such events, but almost as a diversion; there seems a false need to know exactly how many died, how many were hospitalized; reports supersede reports. When the count is finally declared accurate, it is as if one were mourning a quantity rather than people, since the counting exercise is a way of establishing objective significance in the world. Still, we wept...
...this season. We are very good in this season. And how realistic was Donne's idea, given human indifference and lapses of memory? Yet at times the world can feel as small as Donne's. If nothing else, we have vulnerability to share. A reporter walking about Bhopal last week remarked how on some streets people were living normally, while adjacent streets were strewn with bodies. Everything depended on where the wind was blowing. -By Roger Rosenblatt