Close But Not Actually A Close Call

I have been meaning to write about this and wished to have the entry posted right on the date to commemorate what had happened but I always had either my hands full or some other work cropped up by the time I touched the keyboard, apparently I had to miss the date. Awhh, the date was September 26th. Well it’s not so bad after all for me to have it penned now since the haze is now back, the factor that did and it was in such similar condition when it happened, 9 years ago.

I was coming back to Medan from a place called Brastagi, a cool place like Cameron Highland in our country except now the place was on the Karo Highland (Batak Karo – a sub-tribe of Batak people in Northern Sumatra) and headed straight to Polonia Airport for my flight to Jakarta. I would be having another round of discussion over office matters in Jakarta office that adjourned weeks before. I had been in Brastagi for days attending meetings and conducting trainings, thanks to Budianto, the assistant specially flown from our Jakarta branch office to assist me and he did give me lots of helping hand. I refused to have a lady executive to assist me as it was initially planned as I thought I wouldn’t be too sure of my own conduct while working too close for long hours alone with a beautiful & sexy lady :-)

The haze was at its peak in a week’s record. Yes, maybe it was hazy but I was kind of “hazed” with the way the driver made a run down the slope. The 4WD vehicle, Toyota Kijang seemed to be inches away, I do mean it literally was inches away from the vehicle in front each time when we overtake. It was amazing the way they drive. It was even more amazing when the two-lane trunk road can be used like three lanes with the middle part, right on the white line is used as an imaginary fast lane to speed or overtake, fully cooperated by the drivers both in the oncoming and ongoing vehicles by deliberately move as much as possible to the sides of the road to make space in the middle.

Every now and then, I could even feel the tyres lost tractions with the tarmac when tolerating corners. Up until the curve when we were overtaking another vehicle, sudden turn to the right that made me feel like still traveling in a straight line and yet forced to cage in and felt as if the body was thrown to the rear of the vehicle we had just overtaken and tyres simply screamed, I couldn’t stand it anymore. Felt so uncanny and I did burst out;

“By golly… For heaven’s sake, could you slow down a bit? You are scaring the shit out of me!”

“I am sorry Sir... But, in this part of the country, we are used to it and I’ve been behind the wheels for many years already”.

Gosh!

It brought some relief to me when minutes after he couldn’t speed up anyway. The road was clogged with traffics and I could hear fire engines roaring from afar. The place was Sibolangit district, later I learned that smoky village was specifically called Buah Nabar. Anyway, it was still Brastagi area.

Thick smoke filled up the air but nothing surprised me, I knew it was just another forest fire. Back in my mind I was wondering why these people had a cheek adding to the problem that exists. Couldn’t they see even now it was already hard for us to breathe, with itchy nose, eyes… and still, you wanna add some more?

Well, we were still in a comfortable time frame for a departure time when we reached Polonia, the airport, despite of long crawl passing through the burning area.

Goodness, the burning place where we passed less than an hour ago was the site of a plane crash, so we were told. Yeah, the airliner had crashed in that area. I knew it was something burning, all of us saw but we had no idea over the source of it as we could only see the smoke billowing from the woods, which was all… could be seen from the road.

I chose to line up for check-in at the counter that placed the most beautiful lady. Long before my turn for check-in, people were talking about the airline I was checking in, Garuda Airline, Flight GA-152 - Airbus carrier A-300 was the one that crashed. The carrier was supposed to carry me to Jakarta a little more than 2 hours after its landing.

Amidst of me and other passengers were inquiring further, the airport authority made an official announcement about the tragedy. And my jaw dropped!

In the news later it was confirmed that the plane crashed at 1:55 pm on that fateful Friday afternoon, 26th September 1997, about 15 minutes short before its scheduled landing some 30 km from the airport. 236 were dead including 14 crew members on the flight and a baby. On board were mainly Indonesians with handful of foreigners like the Americans, Dutch and Japanese. The tragedy was caused by the poor visibility due to haze. During the time the plane was down, the visibility was down to less than 100 meters.

I then joined other passengers for Jakarta bound with another carrier similar to the one went down after merely 2 hours later, said the haze cleared for safe take-off by the officials. Throughout the flight to Jakarta I felt some kind of eerie feeling, hence all those while I was always scared of flying regardless of hundreds of hours spent on board, if not thousands. No doubt the crash had got nothing to do with me except the plane I was supposed to board went down much too early.

When the crash happened, little did I realized, the management & staff in KL and Jakarta feared that I was among the victims? Even my secretary in KL, who should've had known better and was the one arranging my itinerary, got confused due to the flight number, feared the same. She cried.

I made a point to call everyone concern once I safely touched-down in Jakarta.

These are the actual pics of the crash site and above are the pics of Brastagi