Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster

Five Past Midnight in Bhopal: The Epic Story of the World's Deadliest Industrial Disaster, Dominique Lapierre and Javier Moro - The gas leak in Bhopal in the winter of 1984 claimed 3,787 lives. That's the official count; unofficial estimates range from 20,000 dead and half a million suffering from the after-effects of inhaling a noxious gas. Why did the tragedy happen? Simple: greed. Union Carbide, in a zeal to supply more pesticide than could be used in the subcontinent, built a plant to produce the pesticide locally. When the Indian droughts and distribution problems conspired to reduce their revenues, UC did what any western corporation does with pride: reduce costs. In this case, costs were reduced by allowing the safety systems of the plant to atrophy. The air-conditioner which should have maintained a regulating temprature was shut down; the flare which would normally have burned off the excess gas was extinguished; the pipes which would have shunted the execss gas to other tanks were left to rust; the employees who should be monitoring the saftey functions of the plant were let go. After all, UC thought, a plant that was not producing any pesticide could not turn into an environment disaster. They were wrong. Due to a series of unfortunate occurences, gas pressure built up in the tanks causing it to escape, with deadly results. Since UC had not seen fit to provide information on the composition of the gas (Methyl isocynate, or MIC) to the local government, no effective antidote could be used by the hospitals when affected people started to arrive. By the morning of December 3, 1984, thousands were dead. The name Bhopal is synonymous with the disaster that occurred there 20 years ago. To this date, no criminal proceedings have been held to hold UC responsible (UC was bought out by Dow Chemicals in 2000, and no longer exists as an independent company; Dow absolves all responsibility of the disaster). UC settled with the Indian government on a sum of US $470 million. After 20 years, about US $300 million are still with the Indian government awaiting disbursements to people who are no longer alive, or even if they are alive, are dying a slow and painful death. The Indian government, maybe out of inertia, or maybe out of the mistaken belief that future multi-nationals may not invest in India if UC is charged with criminal neglect, has not done anything to prosecute UC. UC, for its part, blames the accident on a disgruntled employee! The CEO of UC, Warren Anderson, lives in anonymity in the US; he is a wanted person in India. Thousands of lives have been lost and millions affected, all brushed aside by a UC statement that distills these enormous losses to a "per share loss of 0.43 cents!" This is a great book, written in the same style that Dominique Lapierre uses for "Freedom At Midnight". 2/3 of the book is devoted to glimpses in the lives of the people who were the hardest hit by the gas leak; the remaining 1/3 is devoted to the actual leak.

Reading this book on a plane back from India, I admired the way the author was able to blend in the texture of the city and all the different forces at work: from people struggling for their daily existence to the enthusiastic engineers who built the plant .From cursory knowledge of the incident, I always thought that Union Carbide skimped when building the plant--not installing adequate safety measures, etc. I also had read carbide literature which blames the accident on sabotage, tea breaks, and other nonsense.Lapierre gives a balanced view and shows how the plant, which was initially closely monitored, was allowed to deteriorate in order to save costs.What makes the book worth reading is the people--especially the heroism of people during the night of the tragedy, amazing. Definitely worth reading.

The book starts telling two different stories. One is about an Indian family of peasants which, after a period of dry weather, is forced to abandon their land and to move in the suburbia of Bhopal. The other is about the Union Carbide, a huge American chemical company, which, at the beginning of the Sixties, decides to enter the Indian market of pesticides with its new product called Sevin. In order to accomplish its goal, the Union Carbide builds a factory near the suburbia of Bhopal. In this way, the two separate stories start to tie one with the other. They melt in a single story that ends with the tragic chemical accident that happened at the Bhopal plant of the Union Carbide, the night between the 2nd and the 3rd of December 1984, causing 30.000 deaths and 500.000 injured. I think the author did a very accurate research work. Every character is fully described and every fact is well documented. The great quantity of details gives an astonishing realism to every phase of the story.

A sad and nauseating feeling when the final pages of the book was read.The book would have easily got a five star rating from me - Had it been written by any other mortals...But not for Dominique Lapierre.Dominique Lapierre is perhaps the greatest living historian of our times. This book pales in comparision to his previous collections like "Freedom At Midnight", partly because this is a "tiny Incident" that created a "catastrophy", unlike his other books where the theme spanned along a protracted period of time ( Freedom at Midnight, for example depicts a two year time frame)Neverthless, The author has no control over events at that time - Explaining to some of the critics here as to why the book is at times not that gripping.Bhopal was definitly one of the worst that could have happened to Humanity and the way he unfolds the tragedy commends appreciation - Beginning all the way with noble intentions of Union Carbide - Greed that crept in later- Irresponsibility, a classic ingredient of any safety department in India - Indifference of employees sipping Tea as the gas leaked etc..Similar to the start in "City of Joy", it is Ratna Nadar, a poor migrant who begins his saga....Greedy Arjun Singh (former Chief Minister ) Reporter Tejswani, Padmini - the Young child to get married, Hydrocyanide gas, MIC all blended in perfect proportions to make this book a good novel too.... Only problem is the people who died in this book are all real - They died in excruciating pain.foam, froth and oedema and the author is able to successfully portray with full impact almost after twenty years..Atleast I hope this book is another ammunition for the 30,000 dead victims and 500,000 survivors in getting more than the paltry 470 million Dollars settlement and bringing the "golfing" leaders ( Anderson , the chairman) living in the mansion of "Palm Beach" to justice.

The Union Carbide disaster was truly a grave tragedy of the modern industrialised world. Lapierre presents the events which lead up the disaster of 3rd December 1984 with in-depth detail. His description of the chemical processes, the reasoning behind where the factory was located and the political wrangling which went on before and after the factory was established gives the reader a broad insight in to events leading up to the disaster. Lapierre describes in vivid detail both how Carbide, as a company, insisted on high standards, yet failed to carry through their own doctrines on safety and let the factory in Bhopal fall apart. Lapierre continues to revealing Carbide's own problems with their factory in Charleston, Carolina where similar smaller scale leaks caused human damage and death. The pictures contained in the book are in places shocking and reveal the true extent to human suffering caused by the deadly gases expelled from the factory in Bhopal. What really lifts this book up is the description of the villagers from the various "bustee's" around the factory sight. You really begin to know each one of the characters and at times the pivotal roles they played amongst the villages.A tragic reality which the book reveals is how the west exploit, even today, the developing countries and use them as testing grounds for some of the most destructive and dangerous substances known to man. Even after the Carbide disaster, almost immediately afterwards, the next pesticide marketing campaign kicked off showing that the cost of human life in India is often regarded as negligible by so many foreign investors and firms. I have found some of Lapierre's previous works rather repetitive but I must hand it to him with this book. He has written a magnificent account of events in the Bhopal disaster and I would highly recommend it to anyone even remotely interested in what is one of the worst chemical disasters the world has ever seen.