Derabassi (S.A.S. Nagar), March 6, 2025: As a part of state-wide mock exercise to prevent and tackle chemical disaster, in coordination with District Administration, Sahibzada Ajit Singh Nagar, 7th Battalion of National Disaster Response Force from Pinjore today conducted an exercise at Punjab Chemical and Crop Protection Limited, Derabassi.
Giving details, Sub Divisional Magistrate, Amit Gupta, who is also the Incident Commander under Disaster Management, said that a dummy scenario of toluene leakage during refilling from a tanker was created to practice the mock drill operation.
Giving details of the sequence of actions, he said that while unloading the goods from the tanker, the alarm system sounded when toluene leakage was detected in the connecting hose valve. The workers got trapped on the spot, after the alarm sounded, the security team tried to evacuate them and started rescue operation as per their resources. Considering the gravity of the situation, the PCCPL security team called the District Administration to rescue the 04 trapped workers.
Accordingly, the District Administration activated the incident response system and called for NDRF team to rescue the 04 trapped victims. The NDRF team reached the site and rescued the 04 trapped victims while the fire brigade sprayed water at the site to prevent the temperature from rising above the flash point of toluene. The team closed the leaking valve in coordination with the PCCPL security team and recorded the leak at zero ppm.
The 204 participants of the mock drill operation included Brig. Ravinder Gurung (Retd.), Senior Advisor, National Disaster Management Authority, 15 personnel from Fire Services, 12 personnel from Punjab Police, 10 personnel from District Administration, one Advisor from State Disaster Management Authority, two representatives from PWD, 12 from NGO, 12 from Public Health, 2 from DFSC, 03 from Irrigation, 05 from Home Guard, 04 from MSME, 05 from Animal Husbandry, 2 from Electricity Department, 02 from Director Factories, 35 from NDRF, 80 personnel from PCCPL.