‘At first there were strong winds and thunderstorm, then horror followed’
Filipina pilgrim recalls Mecca tragedy
It started out sunny that fateful Friday when Muslim pilgrims started arriving at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. But the scene changed after the afternoon prayer. Strong rain and wind started lashing. The roar of thunder could be heard. Then horror followed.
Zahria Pandao Muti Mapandi, executive director of the Al-Mujadilah Development Foundation (AMDF) in Marawi City, who is on a one-month pilgrimage with her husband and other relatives in Mecca related that they had to leave the Grand Mosque and go back to the hotel when the sandstorm started.
“It was a Friday so maraming tao doon for the Friday prayer. Mainit sa morning pero after the afternoon prayer around 5 p.m. lumakas ang hangin, nagsandstorm at
umuulan (It was a Friday so there were a lot of people there for Friday prayer. It was hot in the morning but in the afternoon around 5 p.m., the wind blew strong, there was a sandstorm, and rain),” Mapandi said.
She said the mosque was filled at that time, a normal daily scenario with about eight million people expected to be at the Mecca for the annual Muslim Hajj.
She added that while they were at the hotel, the vicious thunderstorm struck, so strong that rainwater was pelting and seeping through the window. The window glass was groaning with the pressure of rain and wind trying to get it.
“Mabuti nakauwi kami agad sa hotel (It was good we had returned to the hotel),” she said in a private message sent through Facebook.
She said they would stay in Mecca for a month, the normal stay of Muslim pilgrims.
Hours after the incident, all was well and back to normal in Mecca.
Hajj is the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca that takes place in the last month of the year, and which every adult Muslim who can afford should have at least once in his lifetime.
When the crane fell Dr. Y Mansaar Marican’s Hajj of the Heart describes Hajj as an inward journey to the Ka’bah of the heart and soul, which after the pilgrimage, the person is reborn and at a starting point of the commitment to cast away one’s bad ways and to begin afresh a new Allah-centered life.
Witnesses on Saturday described the collapse of a massive construction crane during a vicious thunderstorm a day earlier. The red and white crane, one of many that rise up around the mosque to service a major expansion project, toppled into a courtyard of the sprawling compound, where hundreds of thousands of pilgrims from around the world had begun to gather ahead of the annual hajj pilgrimage.
“All of a sudden, there were clouds. The sky was filled with clouds and there was strong wind,” said Mohammed, a Moroccan pilgrim.
“Suddenly, I heard thunder and then we heard a very loud noise. That was the sound of the crane falling.”
Another witness said his car was “shaking heavily from the strength of the wind” at the time.
Qasim, also from Morocco, said prayers had just begun when the rain started, slowly, accompanied by the wind.
“And then we heard thunder. God knows, maybe the thunder hit the crane,” he said.
An engineer for the firm carrying out the mosque expansion said the crane’s heavy hook, which is able to lift hundreds of tons, began swaying.
It pulled the whole crane with it, toppling it into the mosque, said the employee of Saudi Binladin Group.
The screams of victims replaced the prayers that had begun just minutes earlier.
Part of the crane crashed atop an ornate, arched and colonnaded section of the complex, while the rest smashed into the courtyard, gouging out chunks of a floor now stained with the blood of victims.
“If it weren’t for the Al-Tawaf bridge, the injuries and deaths would have been worse,” said mosque worker Abdel Aziz Naqoor, referring to the covered walkway which broke the crane’s fall, and which surrounds the holy Kaaba.
The Kaaba is a massive cubeshaped structure at the centre of the mosque towards which Muslims worldwide pray.
“We saw people dying before our eyes,” the Arab News quoted Sheikh Abdul Raheem as saying.