When the gas erupted, the city became a human river of blinded and suffocating people. Many died in their tracks, while others were crushed by the crowds trying to escape the deadly fumes.

Press coverage at the time of the catastrophe reported “crops of turnips and other vegetables withered and covered with a fine white film. Dead and grotesquely bloated water buffalos lay in the fields and atop one another in pens; pools of water were discolored by the drifting poisonous cloud.”

At least 10,000 people have died since the catastrophe from gas-related illnesses such as lung cancer, kidney failure, and liver disease. The health of more than 500,000 has been effected.

Marchers made their way through the main streets of Bhopal before holding a public meeting outside the abandoned plant, the Associated Press reported. “We will burn effigies of Union Carbide and Dow Chemical to voice our protest. These two companies have betrayed the victims of Bhopal,” said Rashida Bee, who heads a group of women survivors of the disaster. “Lethal chemicals are still lying around at the plant, some in the open. Every time it rains these poisonous chemicals are leaked into the soil, affecting groundwater resources in the area.”

U.S. chemical giant Union Carbide agreed to a $470 million settlement with the Indian government in 1989. The company was then bought up by Dow Chemical in 2001. To this day the owners accept no responsibility for the deadly gas leak, claiming “only an employee with the appropriate skills and knowledge of the site could have tampered with the tank.” Media commentators at the time arrogantly asserted that the problem was Indian “management culture” and a low level of technical competence on the part of Indian workers.

To bolster this argument, Union Carbide asserted in 1984 that its plant in Institute, West Virginia, was of the same design as the Bhopal plant and has never had a major accident. That is false. As a front-page editorial in the Dec. 21, 1984, Militant pointed out, “In 1954, the entire town of Institute had to be evacuated because a gas tanker blew up at Union Carbide’s plant. In 1978 more than 100 Union Carbide workers were sent to the hospital when they were exposed to a chemical leak at the plant.”

Union leaders at the Bhopal plant at the time of the disaster charged the company with “total apathy and negligence.” They said they had warned the company many times that working conditions in the plant had to be improved. The bosses ignored the warnings of the Indian workers, as they have many of the safety demands of workers at their U.S. plants.  
 
 
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