The temperature in and around the crashed Air India plane rose to around 1,000 degrees C which made the rescue operation extremely difficult, officials said on Thursday night.
Even dogs and birds at the site could not escape, they said. A London-bound Air India plane carrying 242 passengers and crew crashed in a residential area in Ahmedabad minutes after taking off from the city airport on Thursday afternoon.
There was 1.25 lakh litres of fuel inside the plane and it caught fire so it was impossible to save anyone, Union minister Amit Shah told reporters.
A State Disaster Response Force official said their personnel reached the hostel and residential quarters of doctors and staff members of the BJ Medical College, where the aircraft crashed, between 2 to 2.30 pm.
Before that locals had pulled out some people alive but their teams did not get anybody alive.
A senior fire official said, "As the (aircraft's fuel) tank exploded it created an inferno where temperature rose to 1,000 degrees Celsius in no time. This left little chance for anyone to escape."
An SDRF personnel, who joined the force in 2017, said he has handled crisis situations before but has never seen such a disaster. -- PTI
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