J'khand: Over 1,000 people to be evacuated after 'poisonous' gas leak from Dhanbad underground mines

Over 1,000 residents in Jharkhand's Dhanbad district will be shifted to safer locations, following the incident of a ''poisonous gas leak'' from underground mines, officials said on Thursday.

A woman allegedly died on Wednesday, while 12 people fell sick after "carbon monoxide" leaked from such mines in different places of Kenduadih Basti in the district, they said.

The exact cause of the woman's death, however, is yet to be ascertained and it could only be confirmed after receiving the postmortem report, the officials said.

Soon after the incident, the Bharat Coking Coal Ltd (BCCL) started eviction of people from the "danger zones", they said.

The area is a declared 'danger zone' due to underground mine fires.

The company also pasted notices on walls of houses in the locality, asking people to vacate at the earliest, an official said.

BCCL's Putki-Balihati Colliery Area GM G C Saha told reporters that three ambulances have been kept on standy in the basti to deal with any emergency situation.

"The company is making arrangments to shift the residents to safer places. For safety of life and property, we have already requested them to leave the dangerous zone," Saha said. He also said that all leakage points of gas emission have now been plugged.

The BCCL management swung into action on Wednesday evening, after over a dozen residents of Rajput Basti reportedly complained of vomiting, headache and breathlessness-related complications.

According to a 2019 survey, around 946 families reside in close to 595 under ground mine fire and subsidence-prone areas of the Jharia coalfield, officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)