NARAYANGANJ: Two workers of Meghna Petroleum company died inhaling apparently toxic gas and two others fell sick while they were unloading petroleum products from an oil tanker at Panchaboti under Fatullah upazila on Tuesday night.

Firefighters recovered the bodies of the two workers two hours after the accident at the depot run by the state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation. The two victims are Yasin, 45 , and Helal, 34.
 
The two sick workers were sent to Narayanganj hospital at Khanpur, but they remained unidentified.   

Assistant police super of Fatullah thana Reazul Kabir told banglanews24.com.bd that the oil tanker Medina, carrying petroleum from Chittagong seaport, berthed at the Meghna oil-marketing company’s depot at about 8 pm.  Two of the workers fell sick while changing the pipe of the tanker and both died after a while. Another two fell sick as they went to rescue the victims.

Other depot workers guess that the workers died from poisonous gas lying in the tank.

They said after the accident they informed fire-service stations at Mondolpara and Postogola, but they were told that the firemen had “no such equipment to rescue the persons affected with poisonous gas”.

Then a fire-service unit from Dhaka headquarters reached the spot and retrieved the bodies. No case was filed yet.

BDST/0915hrs, August 11, 2010