108 Ambulance driver Satinder Singh Sandhu was having lunch when he heard a loud explosion. One look outside one of the hostels of the BJ Medical College campus and he saw the makings of a great tragedy – thick black smoke and chaos. His phone rang and he rushed to the place where the smoke was emanating from to find an aircraft crashed and on fire.
Air India’s London-bound flight had plummeted from a height of 625 feet and crashed into the hostel campus in Meghaninagar around 1.39 pm. By 1.43 pm, Mr Sandhu reached the spot, alerting the ambulance service manager Jitendra Shahi on the way. “There has probably been a plane crash. Send the fire brigade,” he is heard telling Mr Shahi in a call recording accessed by NDTV.
The first person Mr Sandhu saw emerging from the crash site was a heavily burnt security guard. He told NDTV that he also saw the lone survivor of the crashed AI171 aircraft walking from the plane and then attempting to go back to save his relative on board. Unfortunately, Vishwas Kumar Ramesh’s relative was among the 241 on board that died in Thursday’s crash. The ambulance driver then rushed Mr Ramesh to the hospital, where he underwent treatment.
By 1.46 pm, five 108 ambulances reached the spot and started rescue work, and in the next 10 minutes, over 20 more ambulances were at the ready. “We first shifted 15-20 people emerging from the hostel to the ambulance,” Mr Shahi said.
While expressing disbelief that there was survivor in the plane crash, Mr Shahi said the situation on ground was scary. “We are prepared for such situations and we have successfully conducted rescue operations in the past. But this time, there were so many casualties in one place. The recent security drills (held around the time Operation Sindoor was launched) prepared us for dealing with such a high number of casualties,” he said.
The Ahmedabad-London Air India flight crashed on Thursday afternoon, killing 241 people on board. A part of the plane crashed into the hostel building of the BJ Medical College. The total deaths so far are 274. The black box has been recovered from the plane and will help ascertain the cause of the crashed.
