A major portion of a 60-metre chimney came crashing down at Bokaro Steel this morning with debris falling over an isolated spot, thereby ensuring that hundreds of workers, who were trooping in for morning shift at the time at the opposite end, had a miraculous escape.
The chimney of blast furnace-III, only 15 metres of it is still intact, fell on a network of pipes carrying cold blast air and oxygen at 8am. But, thankfully three fire engines and the steel plant's disaster management team acted swiftly to put out blast furnace fire, ensuring there was no added crisis.
While it will take another fortnight for the blast furnace to be restored for production to begin, Bokaro Steel CEO Anutosh Maitra has ordered a high-level inquiry into the sudden collapse of the chimney.
According to sources in the steel plant, GM (safety) S.K Nandi would be conducting the inquiry. He has three days to submit a report.
"This is the first time that such an incident has taken place at our plant. The disaster management team worked fast to contain any damage," Mitra told The Telegraph. "An inquiry has been ordered. Our technical experts have started working on a war footing to fix the technical snag so that production starts from blast furnace-III within a fortnight," he added.
