Vetlapalem (Andhra Pradesh), Feb 28 (PTI) The cracker unit blast in Kakinada district on Saturday, which claimed 21 lives and critically injured several others, comes less than six months after the Rayavaram explosion in Dr BR Ambedkar Konaseema district, located less than 30 km away.
Similar to the Vetlapalem explosion, seven people were killed in Rayavaram on October 8, 2025, in the run-up to the festival of lights, Diwali, and familiar scenes played out.
Between 2.30 and 3 pm earlier in the day, a large explosion ripped through Surya Sri Fire Works on Canal Road, Vetlapalem, Samarlakota mandal, blowing up the entire facility and hurling several bodies into the nearby paddy fields surrounding the crackers unit.
“They were flung into nearby fields,” a police official told PTI, describing the intensity of the blast.
Recounting the horror, a nearby villager said that the blast felt like an “earthquake striking the sleepy village.” Doomsday scenes unfolded amid lush green paddy fields in the Godavari village, where burnt bodies, severed limbs, hands, and torsos were being recovered by rescuers and locals.
Police had to deploy drones to retrieve fragmented body parts of the victims.
A group of men were seen shifting a female victim into an ambulance using a sheet made from plastic fertiliser bags (barakam), while a man with peeled-off skin from his left thigh to ankle and on both palms was being carried to safety.
A severed leg was found strewn at the accident site as smoke billowed and flames continued to rage from ground zero, with a large number of people involved in rescue efforts.
In a video that went viral, a smaller explosion was seen detonating with flying sparks as people tried to douse the flames using a water pipe.
Several trees near the blast site were burnt, along with some nearby haystacks, while the entire facility housing the crackers unit was blown up, and a nearby shed was also destroyed.
A policeman and locals were seen trying to revive a victim who appeared to have died; they poured water on his unresponsive body.
Likewise, half a dozen youngsters were seen retrieving a dead body from a field, while rescuers attended to a mutilated and burnt torso of what appeared to be a deceased woman with her legs and hands cut off.
A stretch of a nearby paddy field was ransacked by rescuers to recover bodies, with a little smoke still emanating from it.
Several bodies were retrieved using sheets made from fertiliser bags, and a survivor with burns and peeled-off skin was seen sitting by a paddy field.
TDP Rajya Sabha MP Sana Satish Babu expressed sadness over the tragedy and conveyed his sympathies to the families of the deceased.
The MP is proceeding to Vetlapalem from Hyderabad to monitor the rescue and relief activities, along with several other leaders doing the same. PTI STH GDK SSK
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