Risk register · entry
Q2 · The CoconutVizag styrene leak
A refrigeration failure released a neurotoxin over villages at a rushed restart.
The rare, high-impact event that was always coming, and was always going to be called unforeseeable afterwards.
Why this room
The payoff structure could not be simpler, keep the tank cold and dosed or don't, but that simplicity hid a genuinely fat tail: years of flat, invisible risk that cracked open in one rushed restart into a catastrophic, hard-to-reverse release, the classic hard-shell-then-shatters profile of the Coconut quadrant.
The record
- 13 deaths, including a childcertain
- 1,000+ people exposed/sickenedcertain
- ~300 people hospitalizedlikely
- 2,000 metric tons of styrene stored in the tank systemcertain
- ~800 tonnes of styrene vapor releaseduncertain
- Gas cloud spread over roughly 3 km radius; evacuation radius up to ~5 kmlikely
- Incident date/time: 7 May 2020, approx. 3:00 a.m. ISTcertain
- NGT-ordered interim deposit: Rs 50 crore (~US$5.2 million)certain
- State compensation: Rs 1 crore per deceased family; Rs 30 crore total relief poollikely
- TBC inhibitor out of stock since 1 April 2020; chillers switched off the evening before the leakcertain
- Plant unattended roughly 43 days during COVID lockdown before restartlikely
- NGT fact-finding committee cited 21 points of gross negligence and 18 regulatory violationscertain
- Five unauthorized capacity expansions 2006-2018 without required environmental clearancelikely
- Plant established 1961 as Hindustan Polymers; acquired by LG Chem (South Korea) in 1997certain
- FIR filed citing IPC sections 278, 284, 285, 337, 338, 304likely
Sources
The book
This entry is one of 111 in the register. The full story, and what it cost the people who lived it, is in Risky Business by Claudia Zeisberger, David Munro and Joanna Reijgersberg-Siew.
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