Warren Anderson, who led Union Carbide during Bhopal disaster, died unnoticed on Sept 29
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Florida: Warren M. Anderson, who headed the Union Carbide Corporation infamous for the poisonous gas leak in Bhopal in 1984 that killed thousands in one of history’s most lethal industrial accidents, died on Sept. 29 at a nursing home in Vero Beach, Fla in Florida, United States, a New York Times report said. He was 92.
His death, which was not announced by his family, was confirmed from public records.
A Brooklyn carpenter’s son, Anderson visited Bhopal four days after the accident, where he was immediately arrested. But after quickly paying bail, he never returned to face trial.
The Indian government made multiple requests to extradite him, and officially labeled him a fugitive. A judge there called him an “absconder.”
In an interview with The New York Times five months after the tragedy, Anderson spoke of his feelings of loss and helplessness. “You wake up in the morning thinking, can it have occurred?” he said. “And then you know it has and you know it’s something you’re going to have to struggle with for a long time.”
The Bhopal horror began around midnight on Dec. 2-3, 1984, when a chemical reaction in a plant that made insecticides caused a leak of toxic gases that swept through the surrounding community. The government of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh confirmed 3,787 deaths as a result. Unofficial estimates exceeded 10,000. More than a half-million people were injured, with many dying from illnesses including lung cancer, kidney failure and liver disease.
