Dana Plane Crash: How we survived the horror, by Iju-Agege residents

Today, not only does House No 12 leave stories of bitterness and anguish in its wake, the once blossoming edifice has been reduced to rubble after safety team felt its continuous existence posed serious danger to other inhabitants of the area. And for the survivors of the calamitous incident, the stories of their narrow escape […]

Today, not only does House No 12 leave stories of bitterness and anguish in its wake, the once blossoming edifice has been reduced to rubble after safety team felt its continuous existence posed serious danger to other inhabitants of the area. And for the survivors of the calamitous incident, the stories of their narrow escape will only reverberate for many years to come.

 

“It was a tragic incident for us in this community. Yet, we are grateful to God and the heroic pilot that manage the plane. Imagine, if he had not navigated the plane to where it crash-landed, having discovered that the engines had knocked, it could have been much more disastrous. I’m not sure any one of us would have been saved if the plane had crashed at a densely-populated section of the community,” Akin Aina, General Secretary, Akande/Toyin Community Development Association, said.

Though Aina’s house was some 500 metres away from the scene of the crash, the community leader said he was able to race to the scene of the accident, just in case he could offer emergency assistance. He said since the plane didn’t explode immediately after it crashed-landed, he thought of opening the emergency door, but that door was firmly locked, making it difficult for him to open.

“I raced to the scene of the crash just in time. The plane didn’t explode in the sky, it took about 10 minutes before it went up in flame. When I got there, I tried opening the emergency door, if that could salvage the lives of the passengers, but it was firmly locked. Those who couldn’t come near to the plane yelled at me to leave it as it might explode and barely five minutes after that, the plane actually went up in flames,” Aina recounted.

Asked why he and others couldn’t call safety and emergency authorities that could offer rescue assistance, the CDA official said he did but the rescue teams were simply not at hand to salvage the situation before it got out of hands.

Aina’s wasn’t the only one pointing accusing fingers at the rescue and safety officials. Pastor Elijah Adesina, a resident of House No 10, the building that shared the same fence with the affected House No 12, said though the emergency lines were ringing, yet there was no one at the receiving ends to pick it. Adesina specifically accused Lagos State Emergency Maintenance Agency (LASEMA), the fire service and the Nigerian police of carelessness.

“When none of them picked our distress calls, I decided to call MITV and AIT as well as other media houses I know of, to let them help us broadcast it as breaking news, whether that would draw the attention of relevant authorities,” Adesina said.

Adesina said at the initial stage, many of them thought it was a bomb explosion because most men who could have been outside the premises were already gearing up to watch Nigeria-Namibia match that was about kicking off at the time. He added that it was the black smoke emitting from the crashed plane that sprung them to their feet, drove them outside and forced them to scamper to safety because the house was quite close to the scene of the crash.

But for Ayodeji Owolabi, another resident of House No 10 who was not in the league of football watchers, there was graphical detail he can’t but narrate. Owolabi said he was receiving a phone call outside his compound when he saw the aircraft hovering in the airspace.

“I saw the troubled plane hovering around this area. But because I was receiving a call, it never dawned on me it could crash land. In fact, I paid little attention to it until I saw it nose-diving into Pastor Daniel Omowunmi’s warehouse and its wing sparkling the fire that gutted a section of House No 12. When it crashed landed, there was a big bang, but that couldn’t be compared with noise generated when it eventually exploded. It was terrible, I thought the end has come,” Owolabi said.

At a closer look, the site of the plane crash was actually atop of a warehouse owned by Pastor Daniel Omowunmi but the fire that sparked out of the explosion gutted House No12 which shared same fence with Omowunmi’s warehouse. When Sunday Trust interviewed the warehouse’s owner, the ‘man of God’ couldn’t help but to keep smiling, saying whatever he had lost couldn’t be compared with his life and that of his family that were spared. In his account, he and his entire household were away in the church when the tragedy struck. They ordinarily could have come back, but for the pastors’ meeting he was meant to attend.

While taking stock of his loss, Omowunmi said a rough estimate of the entire properties consumed in the air crash is in the region of N500 million. The list include a six bedroom duplex with a Pent house at the frontage of the warehouse, two standard warehouses with an expansive bungalow behind, six container loads of educational materials printed and imported from abroad but stocked within the warehouse, four container loads of imported kitchen utensils belonging to his mother, over 400 completed doors meant to be delivered to his customers since he also engages in furniture and interior decoration, and over 4,500 fishes in his fish pond, among others.

“I also lost my extra jeep which was parked in front of the warehouse. When the crash occurred, it was battered beyond repair. As I talk to you, except for the cloth I’m wearing now, which I just bought and the vehicle I used to convey my family members to the church on that fateful day as well as the Honda car that was taken out by my brother a day earlier, I have no property of my own anywhere again,” Omowunmi said.

While Omowunmi was still counting his loses, some residents of House No12 who survived the explosion that followed the air crash were also gnashing their teeth in regret, mourning the six co-tenants who lost their lives to the inferno that followed after the crash.

Bolatito Kareem, daughter of the landlady who owns the affected property, Alhaja Ramota Soetan, said she was in the house with her mother when the crash took place. Though she claimed she was unaware that the plane had been hovering around the vicinity for sometimes, she said she and other family members were lucky to have escaped the brutal death by whiskers.

“We escaped by luck. Nine of us who were with my mum at the time of the crash were lucky not to have been at the section of the house hit by the aircraft. We were not aware of the hovering aircraft. All we heard was a big bang at a time. Though we initially thought it was a bomb explosion, it was not until we ran outside before we knew that an air plane had crash-landed here,” Kareem said.

Kareem, who said she was on a visit from her husband’s house at the time of the incident, also added that the crash was the least expected calamity to befall them. She said two other boys who were in the house were also on a visit to the landlady. She added that the trauma had been so much for her mother that she won’t grant press interview.

In his account, another tenant survivor, Gbenga Julius, a 35-year-old married man, said he and his wife were lucky to have run out of the building unscathed. But that could not be said of their kids as the three of them were wounded before they came of the rubble. He, however, said while the first and the last kid had been released, his second daughter, who was seriously injured, was still receiving medical care from a private hospital within the area.

Of all the stories told, the case of Okechuckwu family, comprising father, mother and their last child, appeared most chilling. The couple were said to have sent their oldest kid, Joel, on an errand but his two immediate siblings followed him while their mother was busy plaiting hair for Ngozi, their last kid.  But when the crash took place the three children who went on errand turned out to be the survivors, while their parents and the last child, lost their lives. Already, Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola has taken custody of the three surviving kids, whether that measure will fill the lacuna already created in the lives of the three children is the riddle that needs to be solved by future.