A tryst with disasters in the air

A tryst with disasters in the air

CHARKHI DADRI (Haryana). A passport, an identity card, a ticket or some letters -- that was the only proof at the civil hospital here today that the Saudi Airways passengers, now a mangled mass of flesh, had ever lived.

Relatives of the victims had begun arriving at the small hospital last night with hope flickering in their hearts. Death is inevitable but it takes a lot to get reconciled to it. Notwithstanding the news bulletins which said all the passengers were doomed, each person hoped for a miracle.

But one visit to the makeshift rooms where the bodies had been piled up, and all hopes crashed. The hospital reeked of death -- gruesome and undignified. Some bodies were intact but most were charred beyond recognition. Tons of ice had been carelessly dumped in the casually ward on which the remains of the passengers -- bodies, limbs, torso, heads -- were piled up. Many broke down.

By late afternoon, 245 bodies had been retrieved from the crash site and brought to the hospital in tractor trolleys. Rescue workers said there was little chance of recovering the other bodies which, probably, the blaze set off by the crash had consumed.

Hearts sank when doubts seemed to vanish. ``I am not sure if that is my brother. The shoes look like his but I am too scared to remove the white sheet from his face,'' said Ajji Varghese. A resident of Hari Nagar in Delhi, Ajji had dropped his brother Ajit at the Indira Gandhi International Airport barely two hours before he heard news of the collision on BBC.

Mubarak Ali, a native of Sikar in Rajasthan, was desperately looking for the remains of his nephew Mohammad Salim while Nafisa from Aligarh wailed uncontrollably when told that her son's body had been identified. The identification was done on the basis of the shoes he was wearing; there was no sign of the head.

A.Z. Ahmed, a businessman from Delhi, was in a state of shock. He had rushed to the spot as soon as he heard of the crash since his uncle and aunt were on board. ``I came to the hospital but there was no sign of their bodies... so I mustered courage and went to the crash site at night. I tumbled over 40 bodies in the darkness but could find no trace of them.''

(From a news report in `The Indian Express', November 13, 1996)

Now that the horrific magnitude of Tuesday evening's mid-air collision has finally sunk in, the authorities have fallen back on games which they are familiar with: obfuscation and passing the buck. The Directorate of Civil Aviation is stonewalling, pending the results of an inquiry which may take many months; in a bid to salvage their tattered reputation, Delhi's air traffic controllers have rushed to the media to pin the responsibility on technological obsolescence and the linguistic incomprehension of the Kazakhstan Airlines pilot; donning the mantle of martyrdom, Civil Aviation Minister C.M. Ibrahim has offered to resign ``if necessary''; and feigning righteous indignation, over-sensitive xenophobes are blaming the foreign electronic media for seizing on the disaster to paint India in an unfavourable light. It is not that each group is making claims which are entirely baseless. It is true that the Delhi air traffic control should be much better equipped; it is a fact that tinpot carriers from the erstwhileSoviet Union are known to cut corners; it is common knowledge that the responsible minister is more anxious to be in the company of the Prime Minister than to attend to his departmental responsibility... Yet it would be absurd for the authorities to shirk ultimate responsibility for the deaths of 351 passengers and crew in an accident that has no precedent in modern civil aviation history.

(Editorial in `The Indian Express', November 14, 1996)