Bhubaneswar, July 16: Orissa government today asked the Kalinga Nagar-based Visa Steel to shut down its blast furnace until proper examinations is conducted and its faults rectified by an expert.

Visa Steel, the flagship company of Rs 1,600 crore VISA Group is currently setting up an integrated 1.5 million-tonne per annum special and stainless steel plant at Kalinga Nagar Industrial Complex.

On Saturday, 24 workers of Visa Steels sustained burn injuries, 17 of them seriously, after a fire broke out at the plant’s blast furnace at Kalinga Nagar on Saturday afternoon.

Of the 17, two are in critical condition with more than 50 per cent burn injuries.

Among the injured there is an engineer and four permanent workers. However, three patients have been discharged, said doctors at a private hospital, where the injured were admitted on Saturday.

A two-member team from labour department comprising Himanshu Sekhar Mohanty, deputy director of factories and boilers and Kamalendu Mohapatra, assistant director visited the steel plant and examined the technical snags, which caused the explosion.

The committee has given a written order to Visa Steel management not to operate the blast furnace until the defects of the furnace caused by the explosion is rectified and properly studied by a competent expert as per Section 40 of the Factories Act 1948.

The committee said the accident occurred when the combustible gases inside the furnace came in contact with oxygen after the clay sealing of the gas injector trayer when it caught fire and exploded.

“The explosion occurred when the furnace was being shut down for maintenance. There are certain procedures to shut down a furnace. Here these were not properly implemented, for which flammable gases like hydrogen and carbon monoxide came in contact with the oxygen,” said Mohanty. Mohanty blamed the Visa Steel management for not adhering to the maintenance protocol, which led to the accident.

Visa Steel vice-president (corporate) Jagat Indu Parija however said the company has already shut down the blast furnace. “It’s a routine shutdown. Since it was a big accident it should take about a week before we start,” said Parija, adding that one of the big steel plants of the country is guiding the company in maintaining the blast furnace.

“But accidents would happen despite all precautions and safeguards in industrial sites,” he said.