At 14.35 (CAT time), an Antonov cargo and passenger plane leased by Nigerian carrier Dalu Air crashed into the heart of Khayelitsha–Cape Town’s most populous township. Liam de Villiers was one of the first paramedics on the scene. An Advanced Life Support Paramedic for Cape Medical Response at the time of the incident, Liam now works as a trauma counsellor. This interview was conducted via Skype and email and collated into a single account.

We were dealing with an incident on Baden Powell Drive when it happened. A taxi had clipped a Merc and overturned, but it wasn’t too hectic. The taxi was empty at the time, and although the driver had only minor injuries, we’d need to ferry him to Casualty to get stitched up. It was one of those rare still days, the southeaster that had been raging for weeks had blown itself out, and there was only a wisp of cloud trickling over the lip of Table Mountain. A perfect day, I guess you could say, although we were parked a bit too close to the Macassar sewage works for comfort. After smelling that for twenty minutes, I was grateful I hadn’t had a chance to scarf down the KFC I’d bought for lunch.

I was on with Cornelius that day, one of our newer guys. He was a cool oke, good sense of humour. While I dealt with the driver, he was gossiping with a couple of traffic cops who were on the scene. The taxi-driver was shouting into his cellphone, lying to his boss while I dressed the wound on his upper arm. You wouldn’t have known anything had happened to him; he didn’t flinch once. I was just about to ask Cornelius if he’d let False Bay Casualty know we were en route with a patient, when a roaring sound ripped out of the sky, making all of us jump. The taxi-driver’s hand went limp and his phone clattered to the ground.

And then we saw it. I know everyone says this, but it was exactly like watching a scene from a movie; you couldn’t believe it was actually happening. It was flying so low I could see the chipped paint in its logo–you know, that green swirl curving round a ‘D’. Its landing gear was down and the wings were dipping crazily from side to side like a rope-walker trying to get his balance. I remember thinking, airport’s the other way, what the fuck is the pilot doing?

Cornelius was shouting something, pointing at it. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I got the gist. Mitchell’s Plain, where his family lived, wasn’t that far away from where the plane looked to be headed. It was obvious it was going to crash; it wasn’t on fire or anything like that, but it was clear it was in severe trouble.

The plane disappeared out of sight, there was a ‘crump’, and I swear, the ground shook. Later, Darren, our base controller, said that we were probably too far away to feel any kind of aftershock, but that’s how I remember it. Seconds later a black cloud blossomed into the sky. Huge it was, made me think of those pictures of Hiroshima. And I thought, yissus, no way did anyone survive that.

We didn’t stop to think. Cornelius jumped in the driver’s seat, started radioing the base station, telling them we had a major incident on our hands and to notify the centre for disaster management. I told the taxi-driver he’d have to wait for another ambulance to take him to Casualty and shouted, ‘Tell them it’s a Phase Three, tell them it’s a Phase Three!’ The cops were already on the road, heading straight for the Khayelitsha Harare turn-off. I jumped in the back of the ambulance, the adrenaline shooting through me, washing away all the tiredness I was feeling after being on duty for twelve hours.

While Cornelius drove, following in the wake of the police car, I pulled out the bergen, started rummaging in the lockers for the burn shields, the intravenous bottles, anything I thought we might need, and placed them on the stretcher at the back. We’re trained for this of course–for a plane going down, I mean. There’s a designated ditch site in Fish Hoek in False Bay, and I wondered if that was where the pilot was heading when he realised he wasn’t going to make the airport. But I won’t lie, training is one thing, I never thought we’d have to deal with a situation like this.

That drive is etched on my memory like you won’t believe. The crackle and pop of the radio as voices conferred, Cornelius’s white-knuckled hands on the steering-wheel, the reek of the Streetwise two-piece meal I’d never get to eat. And look, this is going to sound bad, but there are parts of Khayelitsha we usually wouldn’t dream of entering, we’ve had incidents when staff have been held up–all the ambulance services will tell you that–but this was different. It didn’t even occur to me to worry about going into Little Brazzaville. Darren was back on the radio, talking Cornelius through the procedure, telling him that we were to wait for the scene to be secured first. In situations like these, there’s no place for heroes. You don’t want to get yourself injured, end up another casualty for the guys to deal with.

As we got closer to the site, I could hear screams mingling with the sirens that were coming from all directions. Smoke rolled towards us, coating the windscreen in a greasy residue, and Cornelius had to slow down and put on his wipers. The acrid smell of burning fuel filled the ambulance. I couldn’t get that stench out of my skin for days. Cornelius slammed on the brakes as a crowd of people flooded towards us. Most were carrying TVs, crying children, furniture–dogs even. They weren’t looting, these guys, they knew how quickly a fire could spread in this area. Most of the houses are slapped together, shacks made of wood and corrugated iron, a lot of them little more than kindling, not to mention the amount of paraffin that had to be lying around.

We slowed to a crawl, and I could hear the thunk of hands slapping the side of the ambulance. I actually ducked when I heard the crump of another explosion, and I thought, shit, this is it. Helicopters swarmed overhead and I yelled at Cornelius to stop–it was obvious we couldn’t go much further without endangering our safety. I climbed out of the back, tried to steel myself for what we were about to face.

It was chaos. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have known it was a plane gone down–I would’ve assumed a bloody great bomb had gone off. And the heat that was coming from there… I saw the footage afterwards, the helicopter footage, that black gouge in the ground, the shacks that were flattened, that school those Americans built, crushed as if it was made of matchsticks; the church split in half as if it was as insubstantial as a garden shed.

‘There’s more! There’s more! Help us!’ people were shouting. ‘Over here! Over here!’

It seemed like hundreds of people surged towards us yelling for help, but fortunately the cops who were on the scene of the minor collision pushed most of them back, and we could assess what we were dealing with. Cornelius started organising them into triage groups–sorting out who was most in need of urgent attention. I knew immediately that the first child I saw wasn’t going to make it. His distraught mother said they were both sleeping when she heard a deafening roar and chunks of debris rained into their bedroom. We know now that the plane broke up on impact, scattering burning parts like Agent Orange.

A doctor from the Khayelitsha hospital was first on the scene, doing a fantastic job. That oke was on the ball. Even before the disaster management team showed up, he’d already allocated areas for the triage tents, morgue and the ambulance station. There’s a system with these things, you can’t go in half-cocked. They set up the outer circle in record time, and the airport’s fire and rescue service were there minutes after we arrived to secure the area. It was vital they made sure that we weren’t going to have any more follow-up explosions on our hands. We were all aware of how much oxygen planes carry, never mind fuel.

We dealt mostly with the peripheral casualties. The majority were burns, limbs hacked by flying metal, quite a few amputations, lot of people with ocular issues–specially the children. Cornelius and I just went into overdrive. The cops kept the people back, but you couldn’t blame them for crowding around us. Screaming for lost relatives, parents looking for children who were at that school and crèche, others demanding to know the status of injured loved ones. Quite a few were filming it on their cellphones–I didn’t blame them–it provides a distance, doesn’t it? And the press were everywhere, swarming around us. I had to stop Cornelius from punching an oke with a camera slung on his shoulder who kept trying to get right up into his face.

And as the smoke died down, you could see the extent of the devastation, bit by bit. Crumpled metal, scraps of clothing, broken furniture and appliances, discarded shoes, a trampled cellphone. And bodies of course. Most were burned up, but there were others, pieces, you know… There were yells going up all around as more and more were discovered, the tent they were using as a makeshift morgue just wasn’t going to cut it.

We worked through the day and well into the night. As it got darker, they lit up the site with floodlights, and somehow, that was worse. Even with their protective breathing gear, some of the younger disaster management volunteers couldn’t deal with it; you could see them running off to vomit.

Those body bags kept piling up.

Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. I still can’t eat fried chicken.

You know what happened to Cornelius, right? His wife says she’ll never be able to forgive him, but I do. I know what it feels like when you’re anxious all the time, you can’t sleep, you start crying for no reason. That’s why I got into trauma counselling.

Look, unless you were there, there’s no way to adequately describe it, but let me try to put it in context for you. I’ve been doing this for over twenty years, and I’ve seen some hectic stuff. I’ve been at the aftermath of a necklacing, the body still smoking, the face fixed in an expression you don’t want to see in your worst nightmares. I was on duty when the municipal workers’ strike turned bad and the cops opened fire–thirty dead and not all from bullet wounds. You don’t want to see the damage a panga can do. I’ve been at car pile-ups where the bodies of children, babies still in their car seats, have been flung across three lanes of traffic. I’ve seen what happens when a Buffel truck loses its brakes and rolls over a Ford Ka. And when I was working in the Botswana bush, I came across the remains of a ranger who’d been bitten in half by a hippo. Nothing can compare with what we saw that day. We all understood what Cornelius went through–the whole crew understood.

He did it in his car, out on the West Coast, where he used to go fishing. Asphyxiation, hose from the exhaust. No mess, no fuss.

I miss him.

Afterwards, we got a lot of flak for taking photos of the scene and putting them up on Facebook. But I’m not going to apologise for that. That’s one of the ways we deal with it–we need to talk it through–and if you’re not on the job, you won’t understand. There’s some talk of taking them down now, seeing as those freaks keep using them in their propaganda. Growing up in a country like this, with our history, I’m not a fan of censorship, but I can see why they’re clamping down. Just adds fuel to the fire.

But I tell you something, I was there, right at ground fucking zero, and no ways did anyone on that plane survive. No ways. I stand by that, whatever those conspiracy fuckers say (excuse my French).

I still stand by that.