Nearly 600 Kerala Residents, Part of Air India Crash Rescue Op, Go in Quarantine Amid Covid-19 Scare

Around 600 people who were part of the rescue operations at Karipur airport, including Malappuram collector K Gopalakrishnan, have gone into quarantine as precautionary measure.

Shabeer AP, who was part of the rescue operations is now under home quarantine.

Recollects the event, Shabeer said, “We reached the spot after hearing a huge crash sound. When I reached already about 10-15 people were there. It was raining heavily. Initially there was a fear of the flight catching fire but hearing the cries of the passengers, we just forgot everything and tried to rescue the people.”

The area was in containment zone but that did not stop the nearby people from helping the passengers.

Shabeer said, “There were children, pregnant ladies, elderly who were crying out. And we could see many bleeding. At that moment we did not think of anything other than saving these lives. We actually did not think much about coronavirus at that time because our aim was to save as many people as we could. There were people who did not even have mask while involved in rescue operation.”

Many of the people were shifted to hospitals in private vehicles, including autos, cars and jeep.

The flight was from Dubai and as part of the Covid-19 protocol, the passengers should have been under home quarantine for 14 days. One of the passengers who died was tested positive for Covid-19.

As many as 114 people are still under treatment at various hospitals and the condition of about 16 continues to be critical. The crash has taken the life of 18 people, including the pilot and the co-pilot.