Chennai: The name tattooed on Sumanthu Juang’s left hand reads “Seema”. For hours on Monday, the 21-year-old sat outside an intensive care unit of Sri Venkateswaraa Medcity, waiting for news of his wife, who lay unconscious inside on ventilator support.“Will she recover?” he asked, in Hindi. Seema was among 18 workers — two men and 16 women — who collapsed at a seafood and shrimp processing factory in Tiruvallur district on Sunday after an ammonia gas leak sent toxic fumes through the facility. By the time they arrived at the medical college and hospital in Redhills, most were unconscious, their clothes saturated with chemicals, their lungs struggling.The hospital had no idea who they were. “We had no time to find out their names,” said Dr T Sabeetha, the hospital’s dean. “We clicked their photos and marked them as 1, 2, 3, and so on.” It took a full 24 hours before staff could piece together the patients’ identities — and even then, she said, the records contained errors.The delay reflected a harder truth about who these workers are. Nearly all are migrant labourers from Odisha, drawn to the seafood processing industry by the promise of steady wages. Most had no family nearby to wait with them. Sumanthu was an exception.He had moved to Tiruvallur a year ago with his wife and his younger brother, Lipur, 20, to work at the factory. They lived, along with at least 40 workers, in a cramped dormitory of three or four rooms near the plant. On Sunday morning, after Seema finished her night shift and went to sleep, the ammonia leak spread through the building. She never woke on her own. “She was carried out. She was vomiting continuously,” Sumanthu said.By Monday noon—24 hours after the leak—seven workers remained in the emergency ward, each under individual medical supervision. Eleven were in the ICU; seven of them on ventilators, listed as critical. One patient had been taken off ventilator support that morning. In a ward down the hall, 20-year-old Pulmani Kumari, recovering without oxygen support, held her phone to her ear, desperately trying to recall mobile numbers and reach her family back home using a borrowed mobile phone.At Vels Medical College Hospital, where the largest number of affected workers have been admitted, the situation remained tense. Around 40 police personnel were deployed across the campus as authorities continued to monitor the condition of the injured.At Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital in Chennai, 10 affected workers are undergoing treatment. Police personnel continued to maintain security outside the emergency and intensive care units. All 10 patients admitted there remain on ventilator support, hospital sources said.
