MEDAN, Indonesia (AP) – A decade ago, when an Indonesian passenger jet crashed into a quaint neighborhood in Indonesia’s third-biggest city, Medan, Waktu Tarigan thought he’d never witness anything like that again. He was wrong.
On Tuesday, an air force transport plane with 122 people on board plowed into the same neighborhood. And the same street.
In 2005, Padang Bulan was a charming middle-class residential area in this steamy tropical city of 3 million. Its main road, Jamin Ginting, was lined with colonial-style houses with well-manicured gardens.
The area’s only drawback was noise from nearby Polonia airport, then the main international gateway for Sumatra, one of Indonesia’s main islands.
“I cannot forget the plane crash of 10 years ago. It feels like it happened just yesterday,” said Tarigan, 40, who ran an electronics business in his house across the street from where the Mandala Airlines plane went down in June 2005, killing at least 149.