Chennai: When the smell hit, Swati (name changed) knew something was wrong. She had just finished a 12-hour night shift at a seafood processing factory near Periyapalayam in Tiruvallur district and had stepped outside around 11am on Sunday, when the ammonia leak happened.She could smell it even though she was standing outside the building, and it got worse when she tried to approach the dormitory. “Everyone outside was feeling uneasy as well. We could not breathe properly and our eyes were burning,” she said. Inside the building, workers grabbed cloth scraps and plastic bags from the factory floor and pressed them to their faces. Some locked themselves inside rooms and washrooms, attempting to seal themselves off from the gas.“An ambulance arrived 25 minutes later. The fire service came 40 minutes after that,” she said. Swati survived because she was not in the enclosed space. Many of her colleagues, who were inside, did not escape as easily. She is now at Vels Medical College and Hospital, keeping watch over the colleagues who were carried out of the unit.The ammonia leak at the private seafood processing unit exposed dozens of workers who had been asleep in their quarters after the night shift—it was the factory’s weekly holiday, and the building was full, workers said. The gas rose from the processing area on the ground floor toward the women’s dormitory above, finding workers at their most vulnerable—off-duty and asleep.Those inside the building suffered the worst. “Many experienced breathing difficulties, nausea, and severe discomfort. Some bled from the nose and mouth. Workers said the majority of those employed at the factory were young, unmarried women between 18 and 26, far from home, with no relatives nearby,” said a worker from Odisha. “Most of them have no family here. Two relatives of the deceased had come. We could not meet them. The management took them to the hospital,” he said.More than 120 workers with mild exposure were shifted to a marriage hall about 15km away for observation. Many among them sat in stunned silence—reluctant to eat, quietly mourning colleagues who were not relatives or close friends, but people they had worked beside, day after day, in a place far from home. An NDRF medical team of two doctors and six nurses has since been stationed at the facility, with at least 15 police personnel deployed for security.Volunteers chipped in. TVK students wing Tiruvallur district secretary R Sunil Kumar said passersby raised the alarm. “People passing near the factory reported eye irritation and trouble breathing. The nearest fire station was 15km away, at Thervai SIPCOT. When we reached the spot and realized more workers were trapped inside, we arranged nearly 20 ambulances with ventilator support,” he said.Back in the factory, three ammonia cylinders were removed and transported via tankers to a separate location.
