Five minutes past midnight

BHOPAL, India (AP) – It was five minutes past midnight on Dec. 3, 1984, when 40 tons of poisonous gas burst from a storage tank at the pesticide plant. Silently, it seeped out over Bhopal. Within minutes, tens of thousands stumbling through the dark alleyways, crying for help.

"We all started running toward the train station," recalls Suman Kushawa, 8 years old at the time. She got separated from her mother, father and three brothers as they fled.

"They all died on the way," whispers the orphan, today a mother of two, who still cries for her parents and can barely speak of that night.

Thousands collapsed on the roads, their lungs burning as if rubbed raw with chilies. Some choked on their own vomit. Others were trampled by cows, run over by trucks.

Many simply prayed: "Allah, give me death."

Thousands did die, an estimated 15,000, though an exact number has never been clear.

Those who survived were condemned to a life of gruesome memories, medical ordeals and a fight for justice some believe has been denied by U.S. chemical giants.

As the 20th anniversary of the tragedy approaches, survivors are still fighting for financial and environmental compensation. Other Bhopalis want to put the tragedy behind them, shed their city’s anguished image and reinvent Bhopal as another of India’s booming business hubs.

"There’s no sense in repeating our history over and over. We just need to catch up with the pace of the world," said Jagjeet Singh."If we stay stuck on that one issue, we’ll never make any progress."

Many of the city’s 1.8 million residents live in slums and earn less than a dollar a day, while middle-class Indians race headlong into a 21st century of unprecedented opportunity.

"Everything you see in India is contained in the Bhopal saga. Essentially, it’s the story of survival against all odds," said Satinath Sarangi, director of the Sambhavna Trust Clinic, which offers free health care for gas victims.

The Bhopal gas leak was the world’s worst industrial disaster. U.S. chemical company and primary shareholder of the Indian partnership that owned the pesticide plant, Union Carbide Corp. says the tragedy was due to sabotage by a disgruntled employee and not shoddy safety standards or faulty plant design, as claimed by many activists.

The company, now owned by The Dow Chemical Co., estimates 3,800 died in the incident.

Indian officials say 10,000 to 12,000 people were killed, while Bhopal activists and health workers say more than 20,000 people have died over the years due to gas-related illnesses, such as lung cancer, kidney failure and liver disease.

Indian officials estimate that nearly 600,000 more have become ill or had babies born with congenital defects over the last 20 years.

Meanwhile, the pea-green control room at the deserted Union Carbide plant, now under control of the state government, is a testament to neglect. Plump sacks of chemicals still sit in the warehouse.

Those silent leftovers have become screaming ironies.

"Safety is Everybody’s Business," reads a sticker on the metal panels of the control room, where rusting dials once measured the pressure and output of chemical storage tanks.

Union Carbide, in a statement sent to The Associated Press, said it spent more than $2 million to clean up the plant from 1985 to 1994, when it sold its stake in Union Carbide India Ltd. (UCIL) and the local company was then renamed as Eveready Industries.

"The single most important remediation activity was completed in 1985 by UCIL – the transformation and removal of tens of thousands of pounds of methyl isocyanate (MIC) from the plant," Tomm Sprick, a Union Carbide spokesman, said in the statement.

The state government took over legal responsibility of the site in 1998, but it has done little to remove the debris and sacks of chemicals. Greenpeace estimates it would cost at least $30 million to clean up the plant and the ground water and soil that it claims are laced with carcinogens.

Union Carbide says state studies indicated in 1998 that the ground water around the plant was free of toxins and that any water contamination was due to improper drainage and other pollution, not Union Carbide chemicals.

A Bhopal hospital for gas victims, funded in part by a trust Union Carbide created, believes 500,000 people still suffer from gas-related illnesses and have traces of the toxic methyl isocyanate gas in their bloodstreams.

Women’s menstrual cycles are irregular and some children are still born with deformities or congenital diseases. According to a study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, some boys born to those women have smaller heads.

Adil Bee, born seven years after the disaster, stopped growing after his third birthday. His neck never quite took form. His gnarled feet are turned inward, forcing him to scoot around on his knees. Thirteen-year-old Adil cannot speak; his mother can only cry when asked how long he is expected to live.

"The doctors told me not to expect anything from him," said Raisa Bee, 45, who received 25,000 rupees ($543) for Adil’s medical care.

Adil’s aunt, Rashida Bee, is a Bhopal activist. She and neighbor Champa Devi Shukla received the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, awarded earlier this year, for their dogged pursuit of Union Carbide. For years, they’ve been organizing protests and demanding UC and Dow be held accountable for the cleanup.

She says she was called to action by God.

"God ordered all of us to do it for society," said Bee, 48, who has traveled worldwide to speak about the tragedy. "We’ll get Dow Chemical on their hands and knees, if necessary, to clean it up."

Dow maintains the case was resolved in 1989, when Union Carbide settled with the Indian government for $470 million.

"UC accepted moral responsibility for the tragedy immediately after it occurred," said Sprick, the company spokesman.
But only part of the $470 million has been disbursed to the victims as bureaucrats bicker over who is due and exactly how much. The remainder, held by the government at the Central Bank, had grown to about $330 million over the years. In November, the Supreme Court of India ordered it be disbursed, a process that has begun. Those who received initial compensation will be given an identical amount by the end of the year.

"We continue to hope that the latest directive by the Indian Supreme Court, to disburse the remaining settlement funds, will provide badly needed money for relief and support," Sprick said.

But Bhopal activists argue the compensation should now be quadrupled, since the Supreme Court acknowledged that the number of people who claim to be affected by the gas leak has gone from 105,000 to nearly 600,000 in 20 years.

Activists argue that because Dow Chemical took over Union Carbide’s assets, it should also assume its damages. Dow maintains the responsibility rests with the Madhya Pradesh government.

While the state has provided some jobs and housing, the plant has been ignored.

"India’s been trying very hard to forget about Bhopal," said Vinuta Gopal, a toxics specialist for Greenpeace India. "They’re really scared that the push for corporate accountability would scare off other multinationals."

Smita Sooraj, 25, works alongside Singh at Bhilwara Scribe, an outsourcing center whose motto is "Proud to be Indian; Privileged to be Global."

Sooraj is among many Bhopalis who want to close the book on the tragedy.

"The Bhopalis are not as poor as you think," she said, taking a break from transcribing medical records. "And you can find people from all over India – each caste, every religion, so many customs and cultures. We’re all working united, to build this beautiful city up again."