Beyond The Rubble: A Week Since Ahmedabad Tragedy, Flames Fade But Grief Lingers

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Finding the mortal remains may give grieving families some closure but the stench of death might never leave the entire community of victims, survivors and responders
A week can be a long time in public memory. A week since the Ahmedabad air crash, the headlines are slowly moving on. Survivor Vishwash Ramesh has been discharged from hospital, the black box has been recovered, and investigators have some crucial leads. What is stuck, however, especially in the minds of first responders, are images of charred remains, body parts falling apart and the smell.
The acrid smell was unfamiliar. It hung heavy in the air as my video journalist and I made sense of the black all around us. The sooty walls, the black fibre-like debris all around, the darkness of the night. Almost five hours had passed since AI 171 crashed at the hostel compound of BJ Medical College. But the smell of 1.25 lakh litre of burnt aviation fuel was overpowering. As I made my way through the debris, a broken emergency door, a huge wing of the aircraft lying on the main road were the only things that had a familiar shape.
A sharp metal object slashed through the leather of my footwear. Rescue and relief agencies, civic volunteers, NGO workers—most with bare hands and without masks—had toiled through this for many hours to look for any sign of life.
A few steps away, the smell turned into stench as I made my way up to the boys' hostel mess. Suitcases, trolley bags, hand luggage were all dumped at the ground floor of the mess just behind a small shrine with some pictures of Hindu deities. A deflated football stood out, bearing testimony to young lives cut short. The dark, unstable stairs took us to the first floor. A huge cylinder was lying across the entrance path. We learnt later from the CISF men who had reached the spot in less than 10 minutes that this is where Ramesh had landed miraculously, unbuckled himself and walked to safety.
These men from CISF had just finished duty at the Ahmedabad airport when messages on their WhatsApp group made them rush, even as police and fire teams scrambled. 'I tried pulling out one person…but only his hand came out," a CISF personnel told me with a straight face. They had toiled non-stop for hours along with other responders. Had they been numbed, I wondered, as I saw three days later the teams of NDRF, SFDRF, NSG and police cut through the metal at the tail end of the crashed craft to bring out a bloated body. The men went about their job without batting an eyelid even as the body—bloated and disfigured—was brought down. The uniform scraps revealed it was an air hostess.
The men and women at the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital were not this hardened though. The DNA room at Kasturi Bhawan had a horror story in every corner. A would-be grandmother traveling to London to welcome her soon-to-be-born grandchild, a family from Udaipur excited to start a new life, a group of three undergraduate medical students having lunch together—all stories cut short.
Outside the post-mortem room, the stench was unbearable. But Akash Patni 's family appeared numb to it. Father Suresh Bhai Patni had seen the charred bodies and clicked a picture that he thought was that of his 15-year-old. As he showed it on his phone, my VJ and I both winced. But Suresh Bhai seemed immune till I asked him if his wife knew about their dead son.
Suresh Bhai's eyes welled up. 'How can I tell her? She will die," he wept. Akash had gone to deliver lunch to his mother at their mobile tea stall near BJMC hostel. The wing of the aircraft fell on him. His mother—Sita Ben—can be seen in a now-viral video, running towards the crash site, seeking help, and screaming. She suffered 50 per cent burns but couldn't save Akash.
Sitting a few steps away from the Patni family, on the pavement opposite the post-mortem room, was Pralhad Bhai. His wife Sarla Ben and two-year-old granddaughter Aadya were missing. Sarla Ben was cooking for the doctors at the mess while Aadya slept next to her. Pralhad Bhai had run from pillar to post all night looking for them. He had finally come to the DNA room, resigned to fate.
The stories are endless. Finding the mortal remains might give these grieving families some closure. But the stench of death might never leave the entire community of victims, survivors and even the responders.
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