Cylinder explosion: Three die as factory collapses

The blast occurred when the workers were filling oxygen and nitrogen tanks.

RAWALPINDI:

Three factory workers died and two others were injured when a building housing a factory collapsed following a cylinder blast, rescue workers and police said.

The workers were refilling oxygen and nitrogen gas in small cylinders, to be taken to hospitals and pharmaceutical companies in Islamabad and Rawalpindi when the accident occurred.

The deceased were identified by rescue officials as Noor-e-Ilahi, 60, Zarshah Khan, 26, and Zaheer, 40. Names of the two injured workers were not given.



The deaths did not occur in the blast, but due to injuries sustained when the roof caved in, rescue officials said. The two injured workers were taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences. They were not seriously injured and discharged from the hospital after being treated. The bodies were also transferred there.

The factory — Aslam Industry and Medical Gases — was spread over a plot of one kanal on the Grand Trunk Road near Sangjani. It had more than 500 cylinders in storage at the time of the accident, according to a rescue official.

An official of the Rawalpindi Civil Defence said though oxygen is not flammable, the process of transferring it from one cylinder to another is a delicate process that needs to be handled carefully. The incident might have been caused by mismanagement in maintaining the required pressure by untrained factory workers, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 7^th, 2013.