An aerial view of Visakhapatnam Steel Plant. File
| Photo Credit: K.R. Deepak
Four employees of the Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited (RINL), the corporate entity of the Visakhapatnam Steel Plant, were hospitalised late on Monday (May 11, 2026) night following a gas leak at Blast Furnace-1.
The incident occurred during the third shift when a technical snag led to the emission of carbon monoxide. The affected personnel, identified as Susmith, Yadav, M. Venkateswara Rao and Ramaraju, fell unconscious at the site after inhaling the toxic fumes.
Alert colleagues promptly intervened, manually isolating the gas supply and evacuating the victims from the furnace area. The injured were initially rushed to the Visakha Steel General Hospital within the township.
Three of the workers were treated at the plant hospital and discharged later, while the remaining one was subsequently shifted to a private super-speciality hospital in the city for advanced respiratory care, Steel Plant officials said on Tuesday morning.
The officials confirmed that the incident had taken place and all four were in stable condition. “No casualties or major injuries have been reported,” they said.
The incident has once again brought industrial safety protocols at the public sector major under scrutiny.
Trade union leaders and representatives of the Steel Plant Employees’ Union visited the injured and alleged that declining maintenance standards and manpower shortages in critical departments were contributing to frequent technical mishaps. They have called on the management to conduct a high-level technical audit of the infrastructure to prevent such recurrences.
RINL officials said an internal committee had been constituted to probe the exact cause of the leak. Preliminary findings suggested a pressure fluctuation in the gas cleaning plant circuit might have caused the emission. The management clarified that the incident was confined to the furnace’s internal gas recovery system.
Published – May 12, 2026 12:52 pm IST
