/ 4 February 2000

When disaster strikes in Africa

Cameron Duodu

LETTER FROM THE NORTH

Having only recently flown in an Airbus, my heart went out to the passengers on the Kenya Airways plane which fell into the sea a few minutes after taking off from Abidjan.

I swear I noticed a shudder in the aircraft, followed by what seemed to be a buffeting by air pockets, shortly after it took off and was trying to gain height. This happened on both legs of my trip, and so cannot be coincidence.

My layman’s conclusion, no doubt fuelled by aerophobic paranoia, was that the particular version of the Airbus I was flying on should have more than two engines, so as to deliver more power and stabilise it more efficiently in those crucial moments after take-off. I know the professionals will call this amateur tosh, but, hey, I don’t fly to be frightened during a routine take-off without emergency, do I?

There’s so much pressure on manufacturers to cut down on costs these days: two engines, less fuel, less cost, right? What if one engine conks out? I bet they will tell you that the plane can fly on one engine and land safely.

Well, it probably can. The thing is, I don’t want to think about those possibilities when I am flying, OK? I want to settle down, think of something pleasant, and touch down safely before I know I’ve been up! If the behaviour of the aircraft brings the possibility of a crash needlessly to my mind, then the manufacturers have failed in their job.

Airlines should think of the psychological welfare of passengers, as well as efficient payloads, when they are ordering aircraft. But these days – with aircraft purchasing having become a major political issue, involving alleged corruption on the part of some once- gigantic European political figures and all – it seems one can forget about peace of mind.

Other “what if” questions spring to mind in relation to the Kenya Airways crash. The plane was due to land in Lagos from Nairobi but overflew Nigeria and went to Cte d’Ivoire, apparently because the seasonal Harmattan weather (which blows enormous films of Sahara dust into the air, covering all landmarks with an impenetrable haze) had made landing in Lagos unsafe. The question is, what if Lagos airport had been fully enough equipped as to make a totally instrumental landing possible?

I mean, these days people take off and land in blizzards! In fog, smog, and cumulonimbus-ridden storms. And yet a regular weather feature such as Harmattan defeats a landing in Lagos. It is ridiculous. Lagos airport has been notoriously unsafe for years, and for a time, the United States would not allow its airlines to land there at all. This was laughable, in relation to a country with petro-dollars pouring out of its ears.

But we do know now that “A-butcher” and company were salting away the money in Switzerland (incidentally, the Swiss have been able to trace and freeze about $600- million so far!).

Well, it is to be hoped that President Olusegun Obasanjo will divert some of the retrieved money into making Lagos and other Nigerian airports safer.

For if Nigeria cannot pour money into airport safety, no other West African country can. To be killed in Abidjan, when one had embarked for Lagos, must be one of the most truly annoying ironies in the history of tragedy.

Another shocking aspect of the Abidjan crash is the totally inadequate response of the rescue system. We all used to live in the illusory belief that Abidjan, thanks to the fact that it is still a French colonial capital, was better-run than other West African countries. We were mistaken. Although the Kenya plane fell into the sea within sight of the shore, it might just as well have fallen into the deepest part of the Atlantic.

One of the 10 people who were fortunate enough to survive was a Nigerian, Samuel Ogbada Agbe. He was plucked from the water by rescuers. He described the rescue effort as having been “very slow”.

“If they had come a lot sooner, a lot of us would have been saved. We waited two hours for people to rescue us,” Agbe said.

One of the people who took part in the rescue effort said the crash site, around 5km offshore, was chaotic: “We went out here and there; we had no light,” he said. “We had to improvise.”

The treatment that the relatives of the crash victims received at the hands of Kenya Airways officials also needs to be condemned. Many expressed anger over the fact that they had to spend all of Sunday night and early Monday waiting at Lagos airport before they received confirmation of the names of passengers on the flight.

To add insult to injury, the Ivorian authorities deposited the bodies into a mortuary that was not refrigerated – can you believe it! It was in this stinking place that relatives were expected to carry out the gruesome task of helping to identify the bodies.

“The relatives said identification was impossible because the decomposing remains of the victims had been piled up in an unrefrigerated room, where the smell is nauseating,” said a BBC report.

“It is not normal,” one of the relatives told journalists. “How can anyone recognise the bodies?”

It is bad enough to die in an accident of this kind. But when avoidable circumstances such as this are introduced, to add to the grief of one’s relatives, then rock-bottom has been reached. This is insensitivity bordering on the sadistic, and the Ivorian authorities ought to be ashamed of themselves for augmenting the perception that African governments are not only incompetent, but very often lack the most basic elements of human decency.