30 seconds short of a total disaster

NEW DELHI: Dayanand, a 75-year-old resident of Kair village at Najafgarh on Delhi’s border with Haryana, was in his fields when he heard a loud noise and saw an aircraft skidding on its belly towards him. The old man was so stunned that it did not even occur to him to move out of the plane’s path. Luckily for him, the aircraft stopped 50 metres from where he stood rooted.
Dayanand’s younger brother and his wife emerged from the house and the three rushed towards the Beech King Air C-90A ambulance plane. “Amid swirling dust, the door opened with a crack and a man dressed in white came out,” recalled Dayanand. “He collapsed on the ground as soon as he exited the small plane.”
The eyewitness also remembered two other men hurriedly following the captain out of the aircraft. “One of the men, who looked elderly, had injured his forehead, while another had hurt his thigh,” said Dayanand. Inside were a young woman and a man who appeared to be in an unconscious state.
Sadhna Jha, who lives next door to Dayanand, said she first noticed the airplane from the terrace of her house. She saw the aircraft suddenly fly lower and then brush over some trees before narrowly missing the main road of the village. It crashed in the fields with a loud bang and dragged itself across the bumpy field.
It was her daughter, a college student, who shouted that the aircraft was careening in their direction. “All of us were horrified. We ran down from the terrace thinking that the plane would hit the houses around,” said Jha.
The villagers gathered their wits and ran to the wreck with water and whatever first aid kit they could lay their hands on.
However, the passengers seemed to be doing okay and did not require medication. The doctor travelling on the ambulance craft pulled out the patient with the help of a crew member and readjusted his oxygen supply.
“A girl aged around 20 years was crying that her father would not be able to survive the crash. She was consoled by the women and given water to drink,” said Devender Kumar, 50, a villager. “The fliers were in a state of shock and regained some normalcy only after we had offered them tea and some water.”
More than 2,000 people gathered at the spot to watch the dramatic scene. Those who saw the crash felt that had the small plane been airborne for even 30 seconds more, it would have hit houses standing in its way further afield. A lengthy gash in the field could be seen from the main road to the spot where the craft had come to a halt.
Police cordoned off the area even as officials from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation reached the village to inspect the wreckage. Teams from the Delhi Fire Services and Delhi Disaster Management Authority also converged on the accident site, followed by sleuths from the Crime Branch of Delhi Police.