Chilean officials are closely following a purple cloud over a city in the country. The substance would be composed of iodine vapor, and it was caused by a failure in the pumpUncovering an environmental emergency.
The matter started from last weekend. In the Cala Cala mine of the Saltpeter and Iodine Company (Kosaych), very close to the town of Pozzo Almonte, is located 1,470 km north of Santiago. The appearance of the purple cloud created fear in the community, forcing the regional authorities to deal with the situation.
“We are doing an inspection process, which shows us that this fact is due to the failure of an impeller pump motor”, said Christian Ibanez, deputy regional director of Tarapaca.
For his part, the superintendent of the environment, Emanuele Ibarra, confirmed that a pump at the Cala Cala site failed and the iodine changed from a solid to a gaseous state. For this reason a purple cloud was generated in the northern region of Chile. ,This is an incident associated with the Kosayach company, on its Cala Cala site, and was not reported by the company.However, an emergency table was held to rule out this fact,” the authority said.
Firefighters were also present to take stock of the situation. in conversation with AssociatePozzo Almonte’s fire superintendent, Ephrine Lillo, assured that “From 8:00 am to 10:00 am it was coming out of the plant”, while from the National Emergency Office of the Ministry of the Interior (Onemi), its director, lvaro Hormzabal, said that The incident was reported on Sunday morning, due to which the technical and health team reached the spot.
“Teams were formed on the ground” And we had a meeting with all services to be able to guarantee that, so far, there has been no consultation or medical impact as a result of the situation What we are experiencing”, said Daniel Quinteros, the representative of the President of the Tarapaca region.
The government is thinking about restrictions
Quinteros said that in the event of this emergency, the government would be thinking of sanctions against those responsible. ,We are also in touch with the environment superintendent so that tomorrow we can evaluate the filing of the complaint For non-compliance with the norms and commitments achieved by the company in matters of environment”, the authority said.
The representative argued that the Chilean government is “ecological” and “It does not acknowledge that the current rules are not followed and we are not going to rest on thatSecurity teams and assessors will be on the ground for 48 hours to assess the situation, although it has already been confirmed that the clouds may have cleared.
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