Braveheart driver's act of instinct

Kolkata: Indian Oil driver Tapan Kumar Das gets embarrassed if you call him a hero. Just hours after saving 268 lives by putting himself in
death's jaws, he was back in the job, injured but with a foot on the accelerator and his hands on the steering wheel.
If it wasn't for Das' courage and reflexes, a Singapore Airlines plane would have blown up with catastrophic consequences.
On Wednesday night, Das had driven his fuel truck, loaded with 14 kilolitres of aviation turbine fuel, under the wing of the Boeing 777-300 for refuelling. The passengers were disembarking via an aerobridge then. Just seconds before the pipes were to be attached to the fuel ports, flames erupted from the truck. Without hesitating for a second, he jumped back into the flaming vehicle and drove it at top speed away from the plane. He leapt out of the cabin a second before it was engulfed in the blaze.
Although injured, he even tried to combat the fire on his own until firemen arrived.
"The act was intuitive. In my 32 years in service, I had never experienced something like this. When I saw smoke bellowing out of the passenger door, I jumped into the driver's seat and floored the accelerator. I stopped 50 meters away at a vacant spot where the fire would not spread," he told TOI on Thursday.
Even as Das jumped out of the tanker, he picked up a portable fire extinguisher stored behind the cabin and began spraying foam. He was trying to contain the fire when a flame leapt up and licked his left palm, causing minor burns.
Despite the ordeal, Das was back on duty after a few hours rest and drove another tanker to refuel the Air India flight to Silchar in the morning.
12/06/09 Arpit Basu/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2009, Foreign Jun 2009, Safety Jun 2009