Update on Yet Another Kwinana Industry Emergency

We still don't know the full story of what happened this time. Apparently a fire and at least one worker gassed.

To answer some comments : It's good news week - every week, every day every hour in Kwinana Industry hey.

I guess there have been 6 or 7 serious incidents that we know about at Tiwest over the past 6 months with gas releases and people gassed with dangerous chemicals such as Chlorine Gas - Cl2, and Titanium Tetrachloride - TiCl4and who knows how many we didn't find out about.

Whatever happened to Community Right To Know? It HAS disappeared in Kwinana. With regards to Kwinana Industries Emergency Community Communication/Information service - It sounds good, it looks good, but has it ever worked when we needed it? Will it ever work when we really need it?

Come on Kwinana Industry - Is it really that difficult to fix? or is it a case of Kwinana Industry doesn't think those of us living alongside these major industries have any rights?

Now would probably have been a good time for me to explain how industry divides and conquers the community, how it buys support/silence from certain sections of the community etc. etc. but maybe later because that will be a long one, thus probably should be done on its own.

Yet Another Kwinana Industry Emergency

Right on cue Tiwest strikes again.

Details are sketchy, because as usual it seems the Kwinana Community is being kept in the dark over serious incidents in Kwinana Industry, but apparently Tiwest had ANOTHER emergency incident this morning with evacuations etc.

By 3:30 pm this afternoon the authorities (DEC) had still not been informed of the incident by industry.

I was not in Kwinana at the time of the incident, but other Community Group Reps report that as usual the emergency communication service was not used.

Much of the usual really.

I have lost count of the incidents (gas releases etc) at Tiwest over the last 6 months.

More later as we try and uncover the details.

In the mean time read more on Tiwest here, here and here.

Remembering Bhopal

Fire a blowtorch at my eyes, pour acid down my throat.

Strip the tissue from my lungs.

Drown me in my own blood.

Choke my baby to death in front of me.

Show me her struggles as she dies

- From a Survivor's Poem -

"The Bhopal disaster has no parallel in the history of mankind. It all began on the night of December 2/3, 1984, when 40 tonnes of lethal gases leaked from Union Carbide Corporation's pesticide factory in Bhopal, India.

People just did not know what had hit them. There was no warning. Before anyone could realize the full impact of the disaster an area of about 40 sq. km., with a resident population of over half a million, was engulfed in dense clouds of poison. People woke up coughing, gasping for breath, their eyes burning. Many fell dead as they ran. Others succumbed at the hospitals where doctors were overwhelmed by the numbers and lacked information on the nature of the poisoning.

By the third day of the disaster, an estimated 8,000 people had died from direct exposure to the gases and another 500,000 were injured. Today, the number of deaths stands at 20,000."

Anil Sharma, a Bhopal-based senior journalist, who has covered the tragedy and its aftermath for several newspapers in India, from the Greenpeace publication "Exposure: Portrait of a Corporate Crime."

Read more about the Bhopal tragedy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster

www.bhopal.org

www.greenpeace/international.org

www.corpwatchindia.org

www.corpwatch.org

www.essentialaction.org

www.indiatogether.org

Let us not forget those affected by the Bhopal Disaster