Anthropogenic Hazard and Disaster Relief Operations: A Case Study of GAIL Pipeline Blaze in East Godavari of A.P

Abstract

Disasters are of two type's natural and anthropogenic hazard or man-made hazards. A natural disaster is a major adverse geologic process resulting as floods, earth quakes, tsunamis which cause severe damage of life, property and environment. While the anthropogenic hazard results in the form of human intent, negligence, human error and involving a failure of man-made system. The Nagaram gas leaking from GAIL pipeline fire explosion took 23 lives in the early hours of 27th June 2014. This explosion occurred close to the ONGC's Tatipaka mini-refinery and a gas collecting station began leaking the day before the accident and spread over the area and caught fire when the tea vendor lit a stove. The impact was devastating as the flames spread over a 1km radius, catching people in the vicinity unawares.The major cause for this mishap is apathy towards the haul of surveillance and hovered district administration. The state government has announced ex-gratia of 50,000 rupees and GAIL has announced an ex-gratia of 25 lakh to the next kin of those who died, and 5 lakh to those who suffered permanent disability as a medical aid. The paper aims to question the governments’ ex-gratia over decimation, despite additional surveillance based on an empirical work in support of disaster relief operations over this anthropogenic hazard of GAIL pipeline disaster. This paper provides an overview of this hazard in victim's family/kin perspective, which is aggravated significantly by the vulnerability of people‘s vicinity, and the findings of the study will be useful to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of disaster relief operations in order to assist in the aftermath of future anthropogenic disasters.