Ahmedabad Plane Crash: The Demographics Of An Airport

Rishin Patel, 80, owns a small biscuit and chips shops in one of the numerous lanes of Ambika Nagar in Meghaninagar of Ahmedabad. He was born here and has been living in the same locality바카라�that shares its boundary with the airport바카라�for nearly eight decades now.

바카라�There was nothing here back in the day. All these houses came up much later. There were open grounds. The airport did not even have a boundary wall. We used to go there and play on the runway. Only two Dakota flights use to fly바카라�one at 9:30 AM, the other at 9:30 PM. Sometimes, we would get under the parked planes and play hide and seek. That is my memory from my childhood. I was very young then,바카라� he says.

Over the years, the airport developed, so did the locality. Thousands of houses have come up in the Laxminagar and Ambika Nagar localities of Meghaninagar. The area is now a congested mess. It does not help that it is so close to the airport. 바카라�The airport resembles an auto stand now with so many planes parked at any point of the day. Dozens of flights fly past day and night. Things have really changed since the international airport came up. Of course, there are boundary walls now and there is tight security, so we can바카라�t see the airport, but it바카라�s a significant part of our lives,바카라� he says.   

Even though the constant hum of the planes annoys the residents, they have learnt to live with it. 바카라�The sound is really loud at night. Also, the planes fly at a very low altitude in winters and monsoon,바카라� says Saroj Ben, whose family has been living in Ambika Nagar for the past three generations.  

Despite all this, safety was never a concern. Ever. Until October 19, 1988, when an Indian Airlines flight from Bombay to Ahmedabad crashed near the airport killing 133 of the 135 on board. Patel remembers that day clearly. 바카라�It was the first time we realised that we could be at risk. But that did not stop development. Houses kept on mushrooming, so did the flights,바카라� he says.  

Most people living in these localities are daily wagers, some own small business, and some are service class people, financially slightly better than the rest. However, not one gave a satisfactory answer to the one question that was asked to all바카라�who owns the land on which these houses have come up? Many insisted these are private properties bought from builders and that they have all the valid documents.

While the localities grew horizontally, there was a cap on vertical growth. The airport authorities prohibit them from building tall structures that come in the radar of the Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower. Residents keep breaking these rules from time to time. When the authorities visit the localities, primarily to prune and trim the overgrown trees, they tell the residents to raze illegally sprung up vertical structures. Nothing happens after that. It바카라�s been a while that an official survey has taken place, say residents.  

Things have started moving only after the June 12 Air India crash in which more than 270 people lost their lives. Some structures have now been demolished.

Thirty-year-old Ankita Sagar feared that the police would round her up or the family could have a run-in with them if they failed to comply with the orders of local municipal and airport authorities to reduce the height of a concrete structure that protected the stairs of their house from rains.

The family received a notice and was informed by authorities to reduce the height of the structure to a permissible two-storey limit. Residents said that the authorities, while sending them the notices seeking that the height limits be maintained, informed them that these structures were 바카라�obstructing the range of flight radars.바카라�   

On June 15, four days after the crash, chunks of concrete and brick lay scattered on the roof of Ankita as they pulled down some part of the extension of staircase. Another family in the area were told to reduce the height of mobile tower. Similar measures of restricting height of buildings followed in several other households.  

바카라�The officials from the local municipality came and they told us that they would bring police if we failed to raze down the part of the structure. So, what we did was that we demolished this on our own,바카라� said Ankita.

Local residents said following the air crash, notices were issued to hundreds of families in Ambika Nagar, and they were asked to restrict the heights of their houses to permitted two floors.

People living in Laxminagar, that is also dangerously close to the airport, also have received notices. The runway nearly touches the houses in several other neighbourhoods which remain separated from the Ahmedabad airport with a boundary wall and spools of barbed wire.

Facilities like hospitals and a large number of multistorey buildings remain precariously close to the concrete runway. On the airport itself, the levels of caution have ramped up after the fatal crash while families closer to the facility recalled nervous times with residents becoming harrowed and children particularly breaking down after the incident.

Rajendar Bhai, who lived in a mud house at Ambika Nagar, said that after the crash, the family grew worried and called him to return home from the factory where he worked as a labourer. 바카라�Our children were terrified; they wept after the crash. We remain the most vulnerable people as we live few meters distance from the runway. We are a worried lot after the incident,바카라� said Rajendar, who lived with over 30 people, including his children and grandchildren.

According to residents of Ambika Nagar, the airport saw considerable expansion over a period of time and now the runway has expanded dangerously close.

They, however, said that the flights take off at higher heights near their buildings than usual pre-crash levels. Watching the flights land and take off after the crash was now notching up anxiety levels among people who live near the airport.

Residents in Ambika Nagar said that it was their good fortune that the crash didn바카라�t happen in the congested locality that could have caused heavy loss of lives. A resident who received notice seeking that he reduce the height of the mobile tower, however, said that there were brazen violations of building violations which were witnessed in the area while pointing to a large multi-storey building that lay a few blocks away from his home.

바카라�Authorities have been partisan and they have not taken any action against the people who have raised a multi-storey building,바카라� said local resident Suresh Desai.

Residents also said that in view of the restrictions on the height of their buildings, they would be forced to sell their houses and live elsewhere when the members in the family grow. A local resident said that when his girls, who were small in age as of now, would get married, their two-storey house would prove to small in space for them and they would be forced to buy a new house.

Families of those who lived near the airport also feared that a similar mishap like the one of June 12 could hit their lives hard, as they pointed out that the expansion of the airport has not happened in line with the building regulations that would have ensured the safety of people who live nearby. Set up over 80 years ago, the traffic has multiplied significantly at the airport. 바카라�When I was a child, I used to play near the airport, there was no wall then, and it was all an open field. Now there is a flight that takes off every few minutes,바카라� said Rajendar Bhai.

In the Chaganjeewadi area of Ahmedabad, which houses a population of over 7,000 people, locals said that the part of the land where the homes have now been constructed was barren while some parcels of land were covered with cultivated crops, before the locals constructed houses here. 바카라�It was all a barren and open land nearly 70 years back when the locals first had their mud houses before they converted them into concrete structures. The airport has seen a major expansion since it was established, but there was no major from the part of the airport that is near our houses,바카라� said Kalpesh Prajapati, 27, a resident of Chaganjeewadi.

Local residents said that they constructed houses after moving to the place from even the state of Rajasthan. Some have simply built houses on the vacant land which they didn't own. The area of Laxminagar Society particularly remains so close to the airport that the residents recalled hearing the screeching sound of the crashed aircraft that drove people out of their houses before it blew up. At the place people came across the scenes of flight struggling to take off and being closer to the houses from roofs than the routine planes that cross this area.

Praveen Bhai, an auto driver, said that the people in the Laxmi Nagar Society neighborhood sleep on top of their roofs. 바카라�We know the sound of the planes like a mother knows her child, and the sound was different than the usual hum of  flights.바카라�

 바카라�We have been living here for several years. Our life is synonymous with expansion of the airport, the flights running overhead. So, I knew from the screeching sound that something was wrong and it was not a usual thing, a usual flight sound,바카라� said 42-year-old local resident Manhar Bhai. 바카라�The sound was different than the routine flights. I was woken up from sleep and rushed out watching the plane before it blew up over one kilometer away,바카라� he added.

Some families in Laxminagar who admitted having set up houses on a land that they didn바카라�t own traced their descent to other parts of Gujarat, besides Rajasthan. While some shanties have sprung up in complete disregard for the building regulations, others have converted their shacks into more concrete structures. A resident recalled the time when the boundary walls were not as close to their houses as they are now.