Indian Naval Ship “Pralay” gutted by fire due to Indecisiveness of ASD Sanjeev Kale

Ranjit Mahanti

Admiral Superintendent Sanjeev Kale’s negligence and his inability to take quick decisions led to a catastrophe as the Naval Ship was completely gutted in fire while Sanjeev Kale looked on and did not let the Fire Brigade Officers take any action to douse the fire.

The incident took place on January 10, 2017 around 11.00 am at the Naval dockyard. A welding work was being carried out in ‘Gyro Department’ of ‘INS Pralay’. The welding work was outsourced to a private contractor. As per the mandatory rules, there should have been two fire sentries at every welding point. But, this contractor did not have a single fire sentry on the site. During the welding, fire broke out. The welders immediately did not realize about the fire. When the fire started spreading, a few people noticed it, which led to a panicky situation and chaos immediately. All the persons on the ship were communicated about the fire and were asked to assemble at the deck. Once all persons on ship had gathered on the deck, it was noticed that two people had lost their consciousness because of the smoke. They regained their consciousness only after considerable efforts from the rest of the people. The persons on the ship were counted to see if everyone was accounted for. Since everyone was present on the deck, they were immediately asked to evacuate.

Ever since the unfortunate incident at ‘INS Betwa’, one unit of fire brigade was permanently placed on stand-by. They were called immediately. All the prominent Naval Officers, including ASD Sanjeev Kale and GM (R) Lekhi reached the spot. The fire brigade, which showed a sense of urgency, started spraying water on the ship in order to control the fire. However, their efforts could not show any results as their water was being sprayed on deck while the fire occurred in the Machine Control Room (MCR).

INS Pralay have four layers, the topmost being the deck, followed by gallery, and then the MCR, and finally the engine room. Fire was located in the MCR Room; while the water was being sprayed on the deck so while the ship seemed cool from outside. The fire was still going on inside and the ship was being burnt internally.

At that time, ASD Kale had two viable options. He could have sought help from the experts from the Mumbai fire brigade department to help control the fire. Second, he could have let some people from the fire department on the ship so that they could spray water in the MCR and thus, could control the fire. However Mr. Kale showed his inability to take quick decisions which could have saved the ship. He did not allow the fire brigade officials to enter inside the ship, which resulted in the ship being gutted down.

As a result, the fire which broke out at around 11.40 am could be completely doused by only 9.10 pm. The resultant smoke could be seen even the next morning. The ship’s gallery and the MCR were completely gutted. One could easily see the engine room, directly from the deck and gallery, with the MCR missing on the ship. Even though the Naval spokesperson described this fire as a minor incident, in reality, the tragedy was much bigger and had caused immense damage to the ship.

This was the second of the three unfortunate incidents to have happened in the Naval Dockyard in the last 40 days. After the above incident, on January 12, at 3.00 am, there was a sudden flooding of water in ‘INS Gomati’. This led to a lot of panic and the water was finally drained out using submersible pumps.

Some might call it bad luck while some might call them as cases of negligence, the fact remains that, over the years, such frequent accidents pose serious question marks over the abilities of Western Naval Command of Indian Navy.