Ahmedabad Plane Crash: 1st Responder, A 108 Ambulance Driver Was Having Lunch When Tragedy Struck; Saw Lone Survivor Walk From Wreckage
Ahmedabad: Satinder Singh Sandhu, a 108 ambulance driver, became one of the first responders to witness and react to the catastrophic crash of Air India Flight AI171 in Ahmedabad.
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Ahmedabad: Satinder Singh Sandhu, a 108 ambulance driver, became one of the first responders to witness and react to the catastrophic crash of Air India Flight AI171 in Ahmedabad. What began as a routine lunch break turned into a race against time when a thunderous explosion jolted the BJ Medical College campus on Thursday afternoon.
Stepping out, Sandhu saw thick black smoke billowing from one of the hostel buildings. Moments later, his phone rang. Instinct took over. “There has probably been a plane crash. Send the fire brigade,” he urgently told his supervisor, Jitendra Shahi, as quoted by NDTV.
The Air India Dreamliner, en route to London, had crashed into the college hostel at around 1:39 pm, after falling from a height of 625 feet just minutes after takeoff. By 1:43 pm, Sandhu had reached the scene, navigating smoke, chaos and fire to begin the grim work of rescuing survivors.
Sandhu Saw Lone Survivor Walking From The Wreckage
The first person he spotted was a severely burnt security guard staggering out of the wreckage. Then, he saw 28-year-old Vishwas Kumar Ramesh, the lone survivor from the aircraft, walking out in shock. According to Sandhu, Ramesh attempted to run back into the inferno, trying to save a relative on board. Tragically, that relative was among the 241 people who perished in the crash. Sandhu quickly rushed Ramesh to the hospital for emergency treatment.
By 1:46 pm, five ambulances had reached the site, and within minutes, more than 20 were deployed as part of a massive emergency response effort. “We first shifted 15 to 20 injured students from the hostel to nearby hospitals,” said ambulance manager Jitendra Shahi, according to the report.
Despite having responded to major emergencies before, Shahi said this scene was unlike anything they’d seen. “We are trained for disasters, and recent drills under Operation Sindoor prepared us for large-scale emergencies,” he said.
The crash of AI171, which had 242 people on board, has resulted in a total of 274 deaths, including hostel residents. The aircraft’s black box has been recovered and is now central to the ongoing investigation into what caused one of India’s deadliest aviation tragedies.
