A day after an explosion at the Tata Steel premises in Jamshedpur injured 11 persons, Jharkhand labour commissioner Puja Singhal said that a formation of an unstable mixture of gases could have led to the incident.
Visiting the accident site and those injured at the Tata Main Hospital (TMH), the labour commissioner said prima facie it seems the explosion could have taken place due to formation of an unstable mixture of gases resulting in an auto ignition inside the gas holder.
The labour commissioner also said that to avoid recurrence of such a mishap, the department has decided to inspect similar facilities at big industrial units in the state, including SAIL at Bokaro.
Singhal was accompanied by chief inspector of factories Awadesh Kumar Singh and deputy chief inspector of factories AK Mishra.
The labour commissioner said a probe team headed by Mishra has been told to submit a detailed report in three days.
Singhal said the roof of the 80,000-cubic metre gas holder, which blew up on Thursday, got stuck on a steel structure and did not fall down, else the number of casualties could have been higher. The Jharkhand labour commissioner said that she would visit the accident site again on Monday.
All inlets, outlets and the main gas pipeline in the vicinity of the accident site had been sealed and the area was being sanitised as a precautionary measure, she said. The labour commissioner said production at the unit (LD-2) would resume only after the department was satisfied with the security drill.
Though the labour commissioner denied there was any negligence on the part of Tata Steel, she said safety norms may not have been followed strictly.
The steel major was making arrangements to airlift those critically injured to Vedanta hospital in Gurgaon for better treatment, she added.