The Jaipur oil depot fire broke out on 29 October 2009 at 7:30 PM (IST) at the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) oil depot's giant tank holding of petrol, in Sitapura Industrial Area on the outskirts of Jaipur, Rajasthan, killing 12 people and injuring over 300. The blaze continued to rage out of control for over a week after it started, and during that period, half a million people were evacuated from the area. The oil depot is about south of the city of Jaipur.
The incident occurred when petrol was being transferred from the Indian Oil Corporation's oil depot to a pipeline. There were at least 40 IOC employees at the terminal (situated close to the Jaipur International Airport) when it caught fire with an explosion. The Met department recorded a tremor measuring 2.3 on the Richter scale around the time the first explosion at 7:36 pm, which resulted in shattering of glass windows nearly from the accident site.
2009 fire The fire was a major disaster in terms of deaths, injury, loss of business, property and man-days, displacement of people, and environmental impact within Jaipur, the capital city of the Indian state of Rajasthan and a popular tourist destination. As per eyewitnesses with factories and hotels around Indian Oil's Sitapura (Jaipur) Oil Terminal, they felt the presence of petrol vapour in the atmosphere around 4:00 p.m. on 29 October 2009. Within the next few hours the concentration of petrol vapour intensified, making it difficult to breathe. The Ayush Hotel in the vicinity of the terminal asked all its guests to vacate the hotel to avert any tragedy. Adjacent to the terminal wall was the workshop of Morani Motors (P) Limited where, per eyewitnesses, cars parked on the rooftop were thrown up into the air to about 10 feet and 35 new Hyundai brand cars were completely destroyed. The police, civil administration and fire emergency services were oblivious to the situation developing in the Indian Oil Terminal.
Around half past six, the staff in the terminal who had contained the leak and flow of petrol panicked and reported the matter to nearby Sanganer Sadar Police Station. Within the next 30 minutes, the local police chief and District Collector arrived in the area along with the terminal's general manager, but with no plan to deal with the situation. The nearby industrial workers, which were running second shifts, were cautioned to vacate the area.
At 7:35 p.m. a huge ball of fire and a loud explosion broke out, engulfing the leaking petrol tank and other nearby petrol tanks with continuous fire, with flames rising and visible from a radius. The traffic on adjacent National Highway No.12 was stopped, leading to a long traffic jam. The Jaipur International Airport is just away from the accident site.
Both the army and experts from Mumbai were employed on 30 October 2009 to contain the fire in the Sitapura Industrial Area. The district administration disconnected electricity and evacuated nearby areas to limit the damage.
The fire still raged on 31 October. By then, the accident had already claimed eleven lives and seriously injured more than 150 people. The District Administration and Indian Oil Corporation had no disaster management plan to deal with this kind of calamity. The local fire officers were ill-equipped to deal with fire accidents of this magnitude. They remained onlookers, and no efforts were made to breach the terminal wall to approach the kerosene and diesel tanks to cool them with water jets.
The fire was blamed on non-observance of normal safety procedures. The depot fire raged for 11 days, killed 11 people, and resulted in losses worth Rs 2.80 billion.
2012 fire A major fire broke out at a petrol storage tank of state-owned Indian Oil Corp's (IOC) Hazira terminal in Gujarat. No casualties were reported. Local authorities and the company rushed fire tenders to douse the fire.
Officials said the fire was reported in the afternoon at one of IOC's five petrol storage tanks at the Hazira depot. The tank had held almost 5,000 kilolitres of petrol, half of its capacity, when it caught fire. Senior IOC officials rushed to Hazira to supervise operations, and an inquiry was ordered to ascertain its causes. The depot was a so-called 'white-oil terminal', housing a tank farm to store petrol and five diesel tanks.
Fire brigade personnel from Surat and nearby cities came to assist, and the IOC sent fire tenders from its Koyali refinery to help douse the fire.
"The fire has been isolated," a company official said. "A high-level team has been constituted to investigate the cause of the fire but our first priority is to put out the fire... efforts are on at war footing."
This was the second major fire at an IOC storage depot in three years.
Inventory The following products were stored in eleven tanks inside the terminal: Petrol () Kerosene () High Speed Diesel () Interface ()
Aftermath About 12 people lost their lives due to burns and asphyxia and more than 300 suffered injuries. Many of the dead were the employees of Indian Oil Corporation.
Disaster Management Plan The Disaster Management Act 2005 envisages that each revenue District must have a Disaster Management Plan. While 31 revenue Districts of Rajasthan had placed the Disaster Management Plan on Rajasthan Government website, Jaipur District did not have any Disaster Management Plan. A Disaster Management Plan for Jaipur District has been put on Internet on 17 November 2009 (20 days after the accident took place on 29 October 2009). In the meantime, Jaipur suffered two more disasters when Swine Flu infected a number of school children, prompting the government to order closure of schools, anda Mandore Express train derailed, killing six persons and injuring more than 50 persons.
Rajasthan State Pollution Control Board Report A Legal Notice has been issued to Indian Oil Corporation for violating The Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act 1974, The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, and The Environment (Protection) Act, 1986.
Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) Report Air pollution across Jaipur was significantly above maximum permitted limits when the Indian Oil Corporation (IOC) depot on the edge of the city caught fire. It had a significant effect on the air in Delhi and Agra, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) reported. Almost of oil in 11 storage tanks went up in flames on the evening of 29 Oct and the blaze raged till 6 Nov.
Investigations The Petroleum Minister of India Murli Deora had appointed a 5-member committee to investigate the causes of Fire and submit its report within 60 days. The Industries & Education Institutions in Sitapura Industrial Area have filed about 150 complaints with Sanganer Sadar police station about deaths, injury and loss of property due to the negligence of Indian Oil Corporation Limited.
Central Bureau of Investigation Case Variation in stock of liquid petroleum products due to temperature variation, evaporation, handling (and also due to pilferage) result in what is known as stock loss. Percentage stock loss for every product for every depot is fixed based on historical operating data. Monitoring of stock loss is done on shift basis daily.
Abnormal variation in stock loss beyond permitted limit invites explanation and even disciplinary actions for the officers at the Depots and Terminals. The Competent Authorities for such chargesheeting for Depot level Officers for such lapses are executive director (Supplies) and Director (Marketing) who prefer to selectively issue chargesheets to defaulting officers to protect their favourites.
First Information Report The Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur City, Jaipur Mr. Mahaveer Swami ordered registering of a number of First Information Report (FIR) against Indian Oil Corporation Limited officers and Civil Administration for non-performance of statutory duty and negligence.
Civil Administration The Director General of Police, Rajasthan to investigate against Mr. B. L. Soni, Inspector General of Police Jaipur Range I, Mr. Kuldeep Ranka, District Collector, Jaipur and Mr. Biju George Joseph, Superintendent of Police Jaipur (East) for commission of offences u/ss 120B, 166, 167, 201, 202, 203, 204, 217, 218, 221 IPC. The order was passed on 10 December 2009, a month after the fire got extinguished.
Indian Oil Corporation Limited As per the orders passed on 4 December 2009 by the Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur Mr. Mahaveer Swami, the Police Station Adarsh Nagar, Jaipur has registered FIR 337/09 under sections 166, 304A, 511, 120B against 20 accused; Indian Oil Corporation Limited (IOC), Through company secretary Mr. Raju Rangnathan, Sarthak Behuria, Chairman IOC B M Bansal, Director (Planning & Business Development) IOC S V Narasimhan, Director (Finance) IOC V C Agrawal, Director (Human Resources) IOC G C Daga, Director (Marketing) IOC B N Bankapur, Director (Refineries) IOC Anand Kumar, Director (Research & Development) IOC K. K. Jha, Director (Pipelines) IOC S Sundareshan, Additional Secretary, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, & Director IOC P K Sinha, Additional Secretary & Financial Advisor, Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas, & Director IOC Prof.(Mrs.) Indira J. Parikh, Former Prof. IIM, Ahmedabad and President, FLAME, Pune, & Director IOC Anees Noorani, managing director, Zodiac Clothing Company Ltd., & Director IOC Michael Bastian, Former chairman & managing director, Syndicate Bank, & Director IOC Dr.(Mrs.) Indu Shahani, Principal, HR College of Commerce & Economics, Mumbai and Sheriff of Mumbai, & Director IOC Prof. Gautam Barua, director, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, & Director IOC N.K. Poddar, Senior Advocate, Kolkata, & Director IOC K. S. Kanoujiya Senior Terminal Manager IOC Gautam Bose, general manager IOC, and other unknown accused.
Section 120B: Punishment of criminal conspiracy
(1) Whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence punishable with death, 2[imprisonment for life] or rigorous imprisonment for a term of two years or upwards shall, where no express provision is made in this Code for the punishment of such a conspiracy, be punished in the same abetted such offence. (2) Whoever is a party to a criminal conspiracy other than a criminal conspiracy to commit an offence punishable as aforesaid shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term not exceeding six months, or with fine or with both.]
Section 166: Public servant disobeying law, with intent to cause injury to any person Whoever, being a public servant, knowingly disobeys any direction of the law as to the way in which he is to conduct himself as such public servant, intending to cause, or knowing it to be likely that he will, by such disobedience, cause injury to any person, shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.
Illustration A, being an officer directed by law to take property in execution, to satisfy a decree pronounced in Z's favour by a Court of Justice, knowingly disobeys that direction of law, with the knowledge that he is likely thereby to cause injury to Z. A has committed the offence defined in this section.
Section 304A: Causing death by negligence Whoever causes the death of any person by doing any rash or negligent act not amounting to culpable homicide, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with both.]
Section 511: Punishment for attempting to commit offences punishable with imprisonment for life or other imprisonment