Three Close Shaves

               Laboratories are dangerous places and accidents, big or small, are common in most of them all over the world. More often than not, they store dangerous chemicals, strong acids, toxins, highly inflammable materials, high voltage devices, radiation sources or powerful lasers etc. With constant use and familiarity, one tends to become careless about their dangerous potential and hazards with the result that accidents sometimes occur in the lab as if they were just waiting to happen. Many a time, these are mostly minor accidents resulting in only the burning of an eyebrow, scalding of the skin or a broken limb, but, occasionally they may also prove to be catastrophic with lifelong injuries or sometimes even fatal with loss of life. Anyone who has worked in a scientific laboratory has, sometime or the other, either himself fallen a victim in an accident or met someone who has, this author being no exception to the rule. During the initial years of my long carrier in BARC there was a time when I was involved in a spate of accidents in the lab and in spite of my taking utmost care and precautions, there have been at least three occasions on which I have had very close calls in serious accidents but, by Grace of God, I have always managed to scrape through without much serious consequences. All the same, these incidents have left an indelible mark on my mind and now, as I reminisce about them in my twilight days, each time I have relived the harrowing experience as if it had happened only yesterday!  

             Sometime after joining BARC (then known as AEET), I was assigned as technical assistant to a young Englishman, Mr. C.B.G Taylor, who was a visiting technical expert from England come to help us develop indigenously BF-3 filled, proportional counters for slow neutrons. I remember how I had felt very elated when I was selected for the job as I thought that it was a great opportunity for me to work directly under a foreign expert from whom I could learn such a lot. In fact, I found Mr. Taylor to be a very energetic, knowledgeable person with technical knowhow in many fields such as high vacuum and other techniques; in the course of one or two years, I learnt from him several practical skills ranging from brazing, welding, glass blowing to even operating a lathe machine. Soon, I had come to be regarded as somewhat of a technical expert in vacuum technology with “more vacuum than Physics in his brains”!

              The boron tri-fluoride gas(BF-3) used in our counters is known to be a highly corrosive gas, reacting with almost everything in its wake causing serious damage to various materials it comes in contact with; so, we had to constantly face many technical problems in our work. We had built the gas-filling system for these counters using ‘Pyrex’ or borosilicate glass tubes and stopcocks, which were lubricated with special, “Apiezon-T” grease, as it was known to be free from ill-effects of reaction with BF3 gas. We also had to maintain a high degree of cleanliness in the counters as well as its gas filling system. For this purpose, we would first dip the counter and its parts in a “magic” mixture of strong acids to clean them chemically and then remove all traces of acids and chemicals used by flushing it with plenty of water. Finally, it was followed up by a thorough rinse in ethyl alcohol and ether, which was removed in turn by just allowing it to evaporate in the atmosphere, warming it up, if necessary, to accelerate the process.

          The BF-3 gas required for filling the counters was generated ‘on-line’ in a closed evacuated system, by heating a substance called ‘CaF2-BF3 complex’ to  250-⁰C and freezing the gas so released in a glass ‘thimble’ cooled to sub-zero temperatures with dry ice. I don’t remember all the details; however, the gas produced thus was 97-98 percents pure and adequately suitable for use in our counters. We stored the BF-3 gas produced in a large, spherical glass flask attached to the system.  One day, Mr. Taylor asked me to replace present 3-litre, gas storage flask by a larger one as he felt the storage capacity of our system should be increased.  I was just waiting for such an opportunity to try my newly acquired skills in glass blowing. So, instead of calling a professional glassblower from the Glass Blowing Section, which was what we normally did, I was only too happy to carry out the job myself.

               So, I proceeded to get a new 5-litre, spherical, glass bulb from the Stores, which I cleaned  thoroughly using our standard cleaning procedure for glass by giving a dip in chromic-acid, followed by washes in water, alcohol and ether. I knew very well that the latter two solvents were highly inflammable and so, I took all necessary precautions to get rid of all traces of the perilous vapors from the bulb – or, at least, so I thought at the time -- by warming the glass bulb all over its surface using a broad ‘brush-flame’, while allowing a tiny, little flame to burn merrily at the end of the nozzle. When the tiny flame refused to light up anymore, I guessed, all the dangerous vapors inside had been completely expelled from the bulb.  However, I was wrong and soon discovered to my horror that my plans had failed miserably! For, as soon as I applied the torch flame to the nozzle tube to cut it to required length and started pulling out the molten glass, it got ‘sealed-off’ momentarily and the lingering vapors inside suddenly burst into a narrow jet of a flame and like a space rocket leaving its launching pad, the huge bulb took off with a loud, shrill roar hurtling itself straight upwards into the empty space above my head.  I stood there like a dumb dunce gaping in awe at the rising bulb and the live demonstration of the principle of Jet Propulsion at work!  As the bulb hit the ceiling, it must have got deflected a little on the return path, because it did not land bang on my vulnerable head as expected, but, luckily, it had missed the target and landed a few inches from me!!  Naturally, the gas filling system, made mostly of glass, was partly damaged and it took several weeks of repairs and reconstruction before we could get back into business.

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            I did not have to wait for more than even two months for my next nerve shattering, near-death experience.  As already mentioned, we were using lots of strong acids and other highly inflammable solvents like ethyl alcohol and ether etc. for chemical cleaning of glass and other components and so, mainly for reasons of safety, we stored all our major stock of hazardous materials in large drums in a small store room at the backside of our lab, while for daily use, we kept some of the oft-needed solvents in smaller, one-liter bottles kept on a wooden shelf above the wash basin. When I found one day our ether bottles nearly empty, I immediately got down to the business of getting them re-filled. So, I went to our backroom to get some ether in a large glass beaker and started pouring it out straight into smaller bottles. Now, it so happened, that morning I had done some glass blowing work on our filling system to carry out some minor repairs. During the repair work, I would often leave the gas torch on the table, when not needed, with its flame reduced to a safe, smallest size. This was our normal practice, but, we would put off the flame in the end after finishing all the work in hand. But, that particular day, I had forgotten to put off the flame, as it had completely escaped my mind until after it was too late! I remembered about it only after the ether vapors hanging around in the airtight, AC room had suddenly caught fire and a bright flare of fire had leaped across the room through a distance of about eight feet! Before I knew what was happening, the flare had whizzed past me through under my right arm straight into the glass beaker held in my left hand! The inflammable liquid in the beaker had instantly turned into a huge “ball of fire” and I instinctively let go of both, the beaker and the bottle. They dropped down to the ground and were shattered into small pieces with the burning liquid spreading all over the floor! I was standing near the entrance door, which was just next to the wash basin and I realized to my utter dismay that I had got myself trapped in the small room with a deadly fire raging all around me! I shouted for help, but no one came as it was lunch time and the lab was almost deserted.

             I noticed then that the burning liquid on the floor was spreading out, slowly but surely, towards the back room, where we had kept our entire stock of inflammables! I knew at once that if I didn’t take some drastic steps, I was heading for a great disaster!! Again, I shouted for help; the help did arrive this time, though it was of little avail. Someone tried to push open the door, but, when trying to enter he was accosted by raging flames and had to retreat immediately. I knew then that I was on my own! I had to do something or whatever it took to quench the fire myself or at least, keep it from spreading further into the backroom. The only source of water in the room was a set of taps located near the wash basin, which was itself immersed in fire. What a pity, we didn’t even have a fire extinguisher in the room, the only ones available being kept at the security desk, near the main entrance! I looked hopelessly at the flames, which were now reaching out to almost the height of the false ceiling, which I hoped was made of some fire-proof material. Therefore, without giving it a second thought, I removed my lab-coat and began thrashing out the flames with it like a mad man. Within minutes, thank God, the fire was brought under control and before long it had simmered down to naught!    

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          The last but not the least shocking of my three “narrow escapes” occurred within six months of my marriage. My wife was already in the family way and expecting our first child. In those early days of marriage, my place of work was at TIFR in Colaba though there were occasions when I had to visit Trombay for some work or the other.  It was during one such regular visit that I found myself quite free early in the day having finished my work in Trombay and so, having nothing else to do, I decided to return to work in Colaba taking some public transport rather than wait for our office bus, which was scheduled to leave not before noon. It was raining fairly heavily since morning and I was just debating in my mind whether to proceed to Colaba or just call it a day and go home to give wife a pleasant surprise. As I was waiting at the bus-stop, there suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere, a Bombay Telephones van which came to a halt right in front of me. The driver asked if anyone wanted a ‘lift’ to Colaba and immediately several men from the queue scrambled into the back of the van while I hopped into the front-seat, next to the driver. With the rains lashing out since morning, the roads had become quite wet and slippery. Soon after, when not even two minutes had passed since boarding, the driver tried to negotiate a sharp turn in the road, when our speeding vehicle skidded with a loud screech, jumped the road divider and landed straight into a three feet deep ditch on the other side of the road, all this in a jiffy!  Everyone in the van screamed out in unison as the vehicle suddenly turned turtle and came to a dead halt three feet below the ground level!                  
                   One by one, we crawled out of the overturned vehicle as it stood majestically, like a true yogi standing on his head, in the middle of filthy mire and dirty water! By now, a crowd had gathered around us to witness our sorry plight while some among them came forward to help us clamber out of the ditch. Thank God, we all had such a miraculous escape with only some minor bruises to show. I had a small scratch myself on my left leg that was bleeding slightly. A good Samaritan in the crowd came forward to give me ‘first aid’. He took out a match box from his pocket and taking a pinch of the Phospherous on its striking face, rubbed it vigorously on my leg and the bleeding stopped instantly. I took the next bus and went home happily as if nothing untoward had ever happened. On reaching home, it was my wife who first noticed that my brand new umbrella had changed its shape into a veritable, inverted ‘U’ when it dawned upon me that the poor umbrella, which had silently borne the brunt of the impact, had been my real savior! The latent, internal injuries made their presence felt the next day. For the next fifteen days, I was confined to bed with a badly swollen left leg!!  

        Two days later, my boss sent his P.A to my residence to make anxious, if discreet, inquiries regarding my unfortunate accident because, to his utter confusion, he had learnt from our Transport Officer that no official vehicle, whether bus, car or of any other form, had ever been involved in any major or minor road accident in the recent past! Naturally!!