Ahmedabad Crash Tragedy: They Want To Talk, But Who Is Listening? 

 
 

 
It was 4:30 PM on June 12—about three hours after the Air India flight crashed. The team of firefighters, who were the first ones to reach the crash site, had been working incessantly since 1:45 PM. Their job involved carefully lifting the heavy wreckage of the plane without the help of any machinery and removing charred bodies from inside.  

The outside temperature was 44 degrees Celsius. At the crash site, which had turned into an inferno, the temperature was 10-15 degrees higher. The firefighters were wearing their layered uniform and high black boots. The discomfort was visible on their faces; fatigue showed in their body language. 

Three hours later, after a replacement team arrived, they stepped aside to take a break. About 10-12 of them slumped near a compound wall, facing the crash site. Their faces displayed a range of emotions—sadness, fatigue, disbelief, and shock. One of the volunteers handed them over small water bottles. The other gave them a small pack of Parle-G biscuits. 
Sitting on the extreme right, Charu Singh, 25, opened the pack and stuffed two-three biscuits in his mouth. Tears started flowing down his cheeks. He wiped them off quickly. 
 
“This is my first major assignment. I have never seen or touched charred bodies before. I got a bit overwhelmed,” he says, adding: “I will try and keep my emotions aside and do my duty. Don’t think there are any survivors but even if we are able to save one life, the whole effort would be worth it.” 
 
More than 300 firefighters rushed to the crash site that day and worked from late afternoon through the night. While some were experienced, for many like Singh, it was their first major assignment. What they saw that day is going to stay with them forever, they said. Won’t it affect them mentally and emotionally? “It does for a while but we learn to detach ourselves from the job and move on to the next assignment. That’s how we are trained,” says Mangat Ram, a veteran firefighter, who helped pull out many dead bodies after the 2022 Morbi bridge collapse in which more than 140 people died.  

“To see charred bodies is a part of our job. But never before had we seen hundreds together. It did affect our boys. Some collapsed on the site and were admitted to the hospital. Many complained that they couldn’t erase those memories and kept seeing these images at night. Some are not able to sleep days after the crash,” said Bharat Desai, in charge of one of the fire stations in Ahmedabad. Will they get any mental health support, in the form or counselling or therapy?  “That's not how it works. We simply move on to the next assignment. We are unsung heroes. We don’t expect applause,” said Desai.  
 
The day after the crash, the focus shifted to other important things—post-mortem, DNA testing, managing the families of crash victims and survivors, handing them over the bodies, helping them with the documentation work so that they could claim death certificates and compensation. Amid this chaos, the first responders—like the firefighters, ambulance drivers, staff at the post-mortem unit, doctors and the eye- witnesses of the crash and the aftermath retreated to the background and were forgotten.  

At Ahmedabad’s Civil Hospital, Shankar Vaghela, an ambulance driver worked throughout the night after the crash, was waiting in a queue. The bodies were to be shifted from the post-mortem room to a separate building where DNA identification was to take place. “It’s all hands on deck. We all have been working round the clock. On average I transport one body a day, never before have I transported seventeen in five hours. At one level, it was physically exhausting, at the other, it was emotionally draining. My heart goes out for the families of the crash victims,” he said. When asked if the authorities will organise any camp to help these ambulances driver cope, he said: “It has never happened before. Don’t think it will happen. But it does not matter.”  

In an open ground, an ambulance was parked. It had arrived from Visnagar to carry the mortal remains of five from the city who died in the crash. “It takes about two hours to reach Visnagar, but yesterday’s ride seemed longer and heavy when we carried two bodies to a residence. The family members accompanying the coffin were sobbing throughout because of the condition the body was in. No one expects their loved one to end up like this. I kept thinking about my family,” he said.  

The day after the crash, many messages were doing the rounds regarding the need for mental health professionals who would assist the families of the crash victims who were feeling distraught and numb. In all probability, they got all the help. Even if they didn’t immediately receive any help, they can afford to opt for therapy or counselling. However, the first responders like the firefighters, ambulance drivers, staff workers at the post-mortem unit, the eye-witnesses living in nearby slums, the residents living in the vicinity of the crash as well as those who lost someone that day simply because they happened to be there will probably slip through the cracks. Factors like the lack of awareness regarding mental health, accessibility to train professionals and financial constraints will come in the way. It will take them years to get over the tragedy.  

There were many who saw the plane go down. At around 1:30 PM on June 12, Rukum Singh, a Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel, who mans a barrack at the Ahmedabad airport, was about to retire for lunch. A flight flew by. Nothing unusual for him—he sees dozens of flights fly by every day. He turned towards the door of the barrack to make an exit. A few seconds later, he heard a loud crash. He looked in that direction and saw the flight he had just seen turn into a ball of fire. Thick black smoke engulfed the sky. And then there was silence. He knew the magnitude of the disaster. A couple of hours later, Singh was standing at the crash site, completely numb.  

“When the flight took off yesterday, something did not feel right. The noise was weird. It was very low. It appeared to be struggling to go further up. In fact, it came to a standstill for two or three seconds. It then made one more attempt, but soon after, crashed into one of the buildings,” said a resident, who followed the second-by-second trajectory of the ill-fated flight. She was drying clothes on her terrace. “I keep seeing this image over and over again. I won’t be able to erase this from my mind ever,” she added. While narrating the incident, she appeared to be emotionally numb. Under normal circumstances, someone would have suggested that she see a therapist. But she has no access to such facilities. Her husband drives an auto for a living.  

The flight crashed into a hostel mess and four residential buildings. Prince Patel, the son of Meenaben Pattani, the counsellor of Asarwa area, who was passing by when the crash happened, immediately jumped into the building.  

“I saw a few students crushed beneath a wall that had collapsed. The building had caught fire. There were suitcases all around. Some people were sitting on chairs, ready to eat lunch. I pulled out a body. The boy was holding a spoon in his hand but he had died,” said Patel. The next day the young boy was narrating the incident in a loop. There were many others like Pattni who were hounded by a section of the media the next day and made to repeat the same story again and again without any consideration for their emotional state of mind.  

Pravin Patel, who drives an auto for a living and lives in one of the slum pockets in Meghaninagar, a densely populated residential area surrounding the international and domestic airports in Ahmedabad, had come home for lunch. As soon as he finished lunch, he heard a loud bang. He thought there was a bomb blast or an earthquake. People rushed out of their homes. Patel and a few others rushed to the spot. The flight had just crashed. It had turned into a ball of fire. Thick black smoke covered the sky.   

“The visibility was so low we could not see each other. We could not breathe. Our eyes were watering. Only after a few fire brigade vans arrived and started dousing the fire, we could see the wreckage of the plane. We immediately jumped in to the wreckage as we realised there could be people buried inside. I saw many charred bodies. We tried to do as much as we could until professional help arrived,” said Patel.  

Won’t it affect him emotionally? “We don’t have the luxury to stop to compose ourselves. There is food to be kept on plates every day. Our daily struggles will help us forget the tragedy,” he said. 

The crash has left one entire neighbourhood scared and scarred. Meghaninagar is a densely populated neighbourhood sharing its boundaries with international and domestic airports. Mostly daily wagers who live in brick structures, are aware that it was a matter of a few kilometres and they could have made it to the list of dead had the plane crashed in their locality. The day after the crash, they came out of their houses at 1:40 PM, around the same time the plane crashed. “Dozens of flights fly over our area every day. Now we feel scared, especially at night. The flights flow at a low altitude in winters and during monsoons. This crash has really scared us and made us anxious. This is the only thing people are going to talk about for the next few days,” says Champa Patel.  

In the Ambika Nagar neighbourhood, Hansa Ben had to take her eight-year-old son to the doctor. “The children kept crying the entire night. They were scared another plane would crash. They kept pleading to be taken far away and did not want to come home. The doctor said the crash has affected them. The way our doors and windows rattled has scared even the adults. These are just children,” she says.