B'luru power plant fire: Engineer succumbs to burn injuries

Bengaluru, Oct 6 (IANS) One of the two engineers, who was critically injured in a heat blast incident that occurred at the 370 MW Gas based Combined Cycle power plant in Yelahanka, has succumbed to burn injuries.According to the police, the deceased had been identified as Balaji Murugan from General Electric. The deceased was admitted to the burns ward of the Victoria Hospital in the city and passed away on Monday night.At least 15 of the staff working in the Karnataka Power Corporation Limited's 370 MW Gas Power Plant were injured in the early hours of October 2.The KPCL had claimed that during the preliminary investigation, it was suspected that the oil leakage from a bearing might have caused fire and the flame came from the chamber resulting in the incident."Root cause is being analyzed to find out the exact reason for the incident. The Combined Cycle Gas Power Plant at Yelahanka which is under construction and commissioning phase. The construction is being done by the Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL)," the statement had added.While Karnataka state fire and emergency services director, K. Shiva Kumar had stated that a heat blast occurred in the KPCL's Combined Cycle Power Plant (370 MW) in Yelahanka while engineers were carrying out tests in a gas turbine chamber."The plant was supposed to commission its operations in December. All day they had tested. But when they were testing, variations in pressure were observed. The natural gas is supplied to this plant by GAIL India Limited. This incident occurred when KPCL engineers were conducting several checks to test the turbine," he had explained.
--IANS nbh/dpb