SAIL officials probe BSL chimney collapse case

BOKARO: Director (technical), Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL),Shri S S Mohanty and other officials on Wednesday visited Bokaro Steel Plant (BSL) to inquire into the case of chimney collapse in Blast Furnace-III on Tuesday. Sources said SAIL chairman, Shri P K Singh is personally looking into the case.SAIL has asked for reports related to the incident.

 

Only two furnace out of 5 are functional.SAIL officials are expecting more than a month for Blast Furnace-3 to become operational again. Assessment of the damages is being done and inquiry is on to ascertain the cause of the incident". The debris is being removed from the spot while top notches are working to normalize the situation.

 

A team headed by deputy chief inspectorate of the factory, N K Sishu and district disaster management authorities also visited the plant and will submit a detailed report to their headquarters.Collapse of the 60m high chimney is seen as the rarest of rare incidents in steel plants.

 

"It was god's mercy that no casualty occurred after the structure collapsed on toxic gas pipelines," said Shakti Kumar, district disaster management officer.However, production of crude steel was badly affected in Blast Furnace of BSL.

 

Only two furnace out of 5 are functional.SAIL officials are expecting more than a month for Blast Furnace-3 to become operational again. The debris is being removed from the spot while top notches are working to normalize the situation. 

 

The incident caused huge revenue loss to SAIL, which is struggling hard to recover from the bad phase facing a net loss of Rs 1,230 crores in the last fiscal year.

 

What surprised senior officials of SAIL was that the Blast Furnace-III, where the incident occurred was shut down on August 2015 for stove repair and other maintenance job.