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Callous contamination

Between camera crews, villagers and sundry law enforcement agencies and VIP visits the site is now of no use to any professional investigating team. Whether it is Boeing or the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) from the US, much depends on the quality of the first 24 hours of access and the purity of the ground. That, unfortunately, has been destroyed.

Add to the fact that the tin kickers (air accident investigators) could have been robbed of several vital clues gleaned from how specific pieces of the 737-800 lay by the trampling and movement of wreckage, the other possibility of individuals picking up pieces of the aircraft as souvenirs and one has a sinking feeling that the contamination is total.

Usually, the wreckage is transported to a hangar and built up piece be piece to check out what happened and in what sequence. Were there multiple tyre bursts? Did the engine caught fire by a bird hit? Was the flight recorder working properly? Were the engines on full power? Where were the flaps positioned for landing? Were they asymmetrical? Every little piece of metal tells a story.

The authorities in any country must, by law, minimise the movement of wreckage and then ensure that a guard is placed in the main crash area so that there is no looting of 
personal belongings.

By the inference one makes from the photographs in newspapers and on TV, the place is overrun with rubbernecking villagers and just about no one seems to be interested in stopping them. They can pick up whatever they want. It is absurd but you can see it yourself. People are posing on the wreckage.

After the first couple of hours of shock, the novelty of viewing the dead reduces and greed sets in. Looting is a part of the crash site unless efforts are made to prevent it. No sign of that.

It might make you cringe at this time but taking off jewellery from a body is quite an easy task and one successful venture leads to another.

An aircraft complement of passengers could be carrying an average of $10,000 each and more in personal effects, including jewellery and cash. The hold itself could be carrying a major amount of liquidity and documentation as cargo for couriers, all of it worth a pretty packet.

For Indians travelling from Dubai on a vacation, the amount of gold on board would have been tangible. At minimum calculation there must have been over 150 watches, an equal number of gold bracelets, necklaces, chains, sundry jewellery and wallets plus credit cards on the flight strewn within picking up distance of hundreds of strangers.

Who would commit such a dastardly act? Normal, generally decent people lured by their windfall. It is lying there, just pick it up.

In the Lauda Air accident in Thailand, villagers clambered up the rainswept terrain and stole everything they could lay their hands on. When the Bellview crash occurred in 2005 in Nigeria the media wrote: “The news that looters were the first to get to the rural jungle of Lissa where the ill-fated Bellview Airlines plane had crashed did not surprise me. Because, I knew that the human scavengers would have invaded the site of the crash before the law enforcement authorities would have gotten there. The desperate hoodlums and antisocial urchins would have rushed to rob the wounded or the dead before even alerting for help.”

The worst incident of looting the dead occurred on an Air Rhodesia flight when the plane crashed into the hills with survivors. Jungle based extremists killed the survivors before looting them.

In 1999, relatives of an Air Fiji plane’s passenger displayed outrage at the time it took for the police to arrive at the crash site…five and a half hours in which window villagers had swiped personal belongings. So far, except for the Indian Minister’s hearty expression of regret and his more than poignant agreeability to consider his resignation the 24 hours that are vital have gone cold. We are now looking at a commission, a judge in command, pages of legal writings, five years and that is it.

To be most cruel, there were no VIPs on this flight. Just good, honest people…and for the system they do not count.

news@khaleejtimes.com

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