Coonoor crash

India lost its first Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), Gen Bipin Rawat, in a helicopter crash near Coonoor in Tamil Nadu on Wednesday. A tri-services inquiry has been initiated to ascertain the cause(s) of the accident involving Mi17V5, an advanced military transport chopper. Equipped with an on-board weather radar and the latest generation of night vision devices, the chopper was reportedly flying at a low altitude in foggy conditions when it crashed in a valley, leading to the death of 13 persons. Even as the incident is being probed, the rescue operation has also become a focus of attention. According to a fireman who was among the first to reach the site, Gen Rawat was still alive after the mishap and was taken to an ambulance wrapped in a bed sheet. The CDS died on the way to hospital, as per the rescue worker.

The operation was severely hampered by the absence of a road in the rural area. Inaccessibility prevented the fire engine from reaching the spot to douse the flames of the wreckage. Workers had to fetch water in pots from the nearby river and houses in a desperate bid to extinguish the fire. It’s not unreasonable to speculate that some lives, including that of Gen Rawat, could have been saved had the firemen and others managed to extricate the injured passengers quickly and safely. The all-important minutes that were lost restricted the number of survivors to just one.

The rescue operation should have been organised and conducted efficiently instead of letting untrained civilians get involved in it. It’s significant that top officers of the defence forces take the aerial route from the Sulur IAF station to reach the Defence Services Staff College at Wellington, which is located in proximity to the crash site. There is a pressing need to cover all the bases on this route in terms of safety to ensure that precious lives are not lost.

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