‘Tail of plane pierced through the wall, crushed our friends'

Hindustan Times

15 hours ago

What exactly happened on Thursday afternoon after the Air India flight 171 took off from Ahmedabad airport, and in less than a minute, crashed into the nearby BJ Medical College complex? While the exact sequence of events that followed the crash is unclear, what is evident is that some students had a miraculous escape.
Students present in hostel complex at the time of the crash and rescuers who reached the spot soon after said that the plane hit tail-first on the mess of the hostel. A part of the ceiling and walls collapsed. The plane's belly, its flap and wings broke off. Some part of the plane hit the fourth floor of a residential quarters within the hostel complex, while a massive fire broke out.
Kishan Valaki, a second-year MBBS student, said he heard a deafening sound, just after an early lunch and while on his way down the stairs from the mess hall.
'It took us sometime to realise that a plane had crashed. I was fortunately saved because the wall crashed on to a beam that shielded me,' he said. 'The tail had hit the building. There was no fire. The walls gave away and our friends were crushed in the rubble.'
According to Dr Meenakshi Parikh, the dean of the medical college, four doctors and two of their family members died in the crash. Around six to seven staff members from the hostel mess are also missing, the dean said. Air India said late on Thursday that 241 of the 242 people on board AI-171 perished in the crash.
Among those who died was Valaki's friend Rakesh Dihora. Dihora was from the same hometown of Bhavnagar in Gujarat. 'He was sitting next to me when we had lunch together but I finished early. The walls and the ceiling crushed him.'
Saralabhen Thakur, a cook, and her granddaughter Aaradhya were trapped inside the mess. About ten minutes before the crash, her husband Prahlad Pratap Thakur had left the mess to deliver food to doctors nearby. On Thursday night, Prahlad was among the many submitting his blood samples for DNA identification of victims of the crash.
'As soon as the plane crashed, there was smoke and fire everywhere. Fire and rescue officers did not allow us to go inside. When we finally went inside the mess in the evening, rescuers had already taken away the bodies. I am yet to find my granddaughter and wife,' he said.
NDRF (expand) officials who reached scene of the crash said that injuries to the students in the mess were mostly caused by rubble from the ceiling and wall. 'The parts of the plane broke off at different places. It looks like after hitting the mess building, the other parts of broke off and fell a little ahead and blew up. We doubt if anyone actually saw what happened because the fire spread quickly and there was smoke everywhere,' one of them said on condition of anonymity.
Harsh Chotaliya, another second year MBBS student, survived with minor injuries, said there a loud sound first. Then there was a second explosion before everything turned black and there was fire everywhere. 'The whole area was burning and smelt of fuel. Everyone was running inside the mess. For 5 minutes, we could not see anything. The walls cracked and rubble came down here(mess), the other buildings were on fire…ran as far as possible from the fire and was saved on time, ' he said.
On Friday, the plane's debris were still strewn all over the complex. The tail was lodged on the ceiling of the mess and one of the tyres was stuck in a wall.
Gujarat police and officials from Air India were guarding the plane's debris and passenger luggage. Though Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) personnel were using excavators to clean the streets beyond the cordoned crash site no plane debris will be removed until experts examine every part of the plane, police officers and AMC personnel said.