‘There was a wall of fire… seen nothing like this before': How Ahmedabad's firefighters dealt with plane crash aftermath
On the afternoon of June 12, an officer working with the Ahmedabad Fire and Emergency Services (AFES) received an emergency call. With the number of fire cases rising in the scorching summer, responding to such emergencies is par for the course for the city's fire officers. But what this officer heard next was something nothing could have prepared any of them for: A plane crash.
'All odds were against us: From the traffic to the public, to the wind direction and the intensity of the fire. Nothing had prepared us for this. But there was a job to be done, so we got down to it,' said another AFES officer, one of the several team leaders who answered the call in response to the crash of Air India flight AI 171 that resulted in the deaths of 241 out of 242 passengers and at least 19 ground casualties.
The first call
'At 1.43 pm, the fire control room received a call from the airport hotline about a plane crash. We dispatched first responder teams from Shahpur, Nikol and Naroda fire stations and then informed the entire force through wireless, asking them to send everyone possible to the crash site,' said a fireman close to the nerve centre of the operations.
But the very first job, however, was to actually locate the plane. Sources told The Indian Express, 'We received hundreds of phone calls from the public that day. The people, calling in panic, gave disparate information. While some said the fire was at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital, others said it was in Meghaninagar. There was a lot of confusion but our teams found its way using the smoke, which followed the crash, as a beacon.'
The first responders then called the control room and relayed the scale of the accident after which a full-scale deployment was ordered.
The fog of disaster
Around this time, some of the officers were at the Riverfront House, working on the recruitment process of firefighters, when a driver saw a large plume of smoke over the horizon. He ran inside the building and informed the officers.
A mid-level officer, who was almost 8.5 km away from the crash site when the emergency call came, said, 'In the initial call, we were told that there had been a crash-landing of an aircraft and so, we coordinated to reach the airport circle. However, we saw that the smoke was not coming from the airport. We checked with the control room again and were told to head to Meghaninagar. We reached in 22 minutes despite dealing with severe traffic jams.'
Apart from the traffic congestion, what made the task difficult for the firefighters was the crowd of curious onlookers, swelling by the minute.
'It was not just vehicles that were parked on both sides of this road… hundreds of people, too, had gathered to witness the tragedy. We had to disembark from the firefighting vehicles and while some of us rushed towards the site on foot, others had to move people out of the way so that the firefighting vehicles and water bowsers could enter the area,' said another officer.
All the officers that The Indian Express spoke to requested anonymity.
Wall of fire and smoke
'When we finally reached the crash site, there was nothing but a wall of fire and smoke, and an intense radiating heat … Even the wind was blowing against us and with it, the heat and the smoke,' said an officer.
Another officer, among the first to reach the site, said, 'When we reached there, we couldn't see anything… there were just flames. We couldn't even make out the hostel buildings from the fire. We didn't immediately understand the situation but wore our overalls and rushed to the site.'
Said an officer, 'On approaching the site, we saw the debris of the aircraft… My first thought was to rescue people who may still be alive inside the building. So, our team rushed in there. Just at the entrance, a piece of debris was on fire with a couple of LPG cylinders lying close to it. We first removed them to a safe place.'
Describing the scene inside one of the buildings, the officer said, 'We saw personnel from the Army's Medical Corp also trying to look for survivors. The army men had reached before the firefighters as the military hospital is right behind the hostel. The aircraft's tail had actually collided with a chimney on its premises before hitting the mess building.'
By the time the AFES reached the hostel campus, the Airport Firefighting Unit was already at work. The city's firefighters promptly took over.
Said another officer, 'We first evacuated around 30 people from the first two hostel buildings next to which the majority of the aircraft had crashed. Initially, we didn't even notice the mess building… We were concerned with the four burning hostel buildings since the mess was not on fire. We began firefighting in the hostel residences.'
Notably, the mess building is located at a short distance from the cluster of four residential hostel buildings – Atulyam.
On the top floor of a hostel building, a team saw two bodies lying next to each other in the passageway. It looked like the two individuals had tripped while attempting to escape the building.
'The bodies were completely charred,' said a member of this team, adding, 'We sought help from the military personnel to bring the bodies down but, at that point, the building was still on fire and they were not dressed for the situation like we were. Meanwhile, a few firefighters arrived with bedsheets in which they wrapped the two bodies along with another one we found inside the building, and brought them down.'
Describing the devastation wrought on the building, an officer said the right side of the aircraft had sheared through the corner pillars and beams 'like a knife' and aviation fuel had led to the entire premises 'burning furiously'.
The next task was to deal with the mess building, where the tail of the aircraft was lodged.
An officer said, 'It was only when we reached the roof of one of the hostel buildings that we noticed something on the top of the mess. We immediately dispatched a team there.'
Finding the fuselage
After clearing the first two buildings, a team approached the debris of the aircraft lying between them and spotted the left engine of the Dreamliner.
The fuselage, said the officer, was unrecognisable. 'There, we found the bodies of three children huddled together.'
Firefighting at the site continued for another 2-3 hours. So, when personnel began pulling the bodies out of the seats, most of the AFES officers were still involved in dousing the massive blaze and multiple blasts caused by the crash.
'We saw charred bodies, hands, legs, intestines everywhere. Some bodies were heaped on each other. Others were fused into each other to the extent we couldn't tell if it was one body or two… many bodies had missing parts lying far away,' said an officer.
Another officer said, 'Most of the metal was so hot that we could hardly touch anything even after two hours… By 8.15 pm, the firefighters were drained, both emotionally and physically, to the extent that we could hardly bear to even speak to each other.'
The Indian Express attempted to reach out to Chief Fire Officer Amit Dongre regarding the work done by the AFES but he remained unavailable for comment.
In a government statement on June 16, Dongre was quoted as saying, 'The fire station teams of Naroda and Shahpur, which reached the scene first, gave a picture of the severity of the situation. In addition to Ahmedabad city, help was also sought from firefighters from Gandhinagar, Kheda, Anand, Vadodara, Gift City and the Army to control the emergency situation. More than 100 firefighting vehicles were deployed at the scene within a short period of time, due to which the rescue operation could be completed in just four hours.'
The statement said that 7.50 lakh litres of water had been used to control and cool the fire. Modern resources like Gajraj (a kind of bowser) made the fire-fighting work easier, it added.
One of the officers quoted above said around 650 trained personnel were involved in the firefighting operation. No firefighter suffered any injury or damage, he added.
Story of two crashes
Rajesh Bhatt, retired interim CFO of the AFES, who was a Station Officer at the time of the 1988 crash, told The Indian Express, 'At that time, the aircraft had crashed just short of the runway into the Kotarpur water works located to its north-east … There was nobody on the ground … At that time also, we initially did not realise where the plane had crashed.'
He further said, 'In 1988, there was less fuel in the aircraft because it was landing, and not taking off like AI 171. So, the fire was also not as major as this one. Despite that, in my 40-year-long career, I have never been as scared as I was on that day. The scale of the disaster, the condition of the bodies, to pick them up and transport them, was the hardest thing we ever had to do in the line of duty. What our firefighters have done today is extremely commendable.'
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