Fire breaks out at Bhilai steel plant

A major fire broke out at the Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP) in the wee hours today, severely hitting the hot metal production at the flagship entity of the Steel Authority of India Ltd (SAIL).

According to official sources, the blaze broke out in the electrical cable tunnel of the plant, located about 30 km from here, and engulfed the power and blowing station. This station supplies compressed air to the steel plant’s blast furnaces, which produce hot metal.

About half-a-dozen fire tenders of BSP were pressed into service to extinguish the inferno. Sources said the fire was brought under control by noon after fire fighters battled for nearly seven hours.

Four employees on the night shift were injured in the accident. However, no one sustained burn injuries. The victims were rushed to the Sector 9 hospital of BSP. Sources said three of them were discharged, while one had been hospitalised and kept under medical observation.

A statement issued by the company said production of hot metal in BSP was affected following the incident. The plant produces 17,000 tonnes of hot metal daily on an average. The plant had recorded best-ever hot metal production of 4.12 million tonnes (mt) in April-December against the previous best of 4.03 mt in the April-December period.

The blast furnaces recently recorded the highest-ever daily hot metal production of 17,519 tonnes on January 21, 2010.

BSP officials said efforts were on to restore production in the plant at the earliest. The officials also estimated the loss to the property was likely to run into crores of rupees.