Army joins operation to douse Assam oil-well inferno

GUWAHATI/DIBRUGARH: The Army has been roped in to help Oil India Ltd build a temporary 150m bridge over a reservoir near the oil-well inferno at Baghjan in Assam's Tinsukia district as part of a concerted operation to "kill" the blowout that started on May 27 and caught fire on June 9.
"The deadline to kill the well is July 7 and we are confident of dousing the fire before that," OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika said.
The Army’s 2nd Mountain division has started moving materials and equipment from Missamari in Sonitpur district and Tezu in Arunachal Pradesh to Baghjan. The plan is to build a bridge to create a pathway and also divert a pipe bringing water from the nearby Dangori river to the reservoir.
"Too much heat is being generated by the fire around the well. We are laying this pipe to pump in water from the river to the reservoir near the well. The pipe needs to be shifted. The district administration has requisitioned the Army," Hazarika said.
The Army had played a key role in putting out an oil well blaze at Dikom in Dibrugarh district in 2005. That inferno took 20 days to douse.
Meanwhile, CM Sarbananda Sonowal has requested scientists at IIT-Guwahati and CSIR-North East Institute of Science and Technology to study the frequent tremors reported by villagers in Baghjan since the oil well erupted, killing two firefighters of OIL and displacing thousands.
OIL CMD Sushil Chandra Mishra on Monday handed cheques for Rs 30 lakh each to the families of the two firefighters, former Assam footballer Durlov Gogoi and Tikheswar Gohain.