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The air accident in Ubaté (Cundinamarca) It is not only a family tragedy, in which the parents (Fabio Grandas and Mayerly Díaz) and the nanny (Nuris Maza) of a year and a half child, who survived, died, but also a huge loss for medicine in Colombia.
Dr. Fabio Grandas, who piloted the HK 2335-G plane, was 50 years old, a graduate of the National University, had worked with the Santa Fe Foundation, the San Ignacio University Hospital and the Los Nogales Clinic and since 2008 he was part of the volunteer team of the Civil Air Patrol.
(You may be interested in: What happened to the baby who survived a plane crash in Ubaté?)
This Air Patrol is dedicated to taking health brigades to remote and vulnerable areas of the country. Dr. Grandas joined her for the first time 12 years ago on a trip to Timbiquí in which she remembers how, with the team, they saved the life of an indigenous woman who walked eight hours to be treated.
“With the Air Patrol we want to leave a granite for this country to grow,” he commented three years ago at a Patrol meeting. There he also told that it was precisely the Patrol that led him to learn and train as a pilot. “A friend instilled in me my other passion, which is aviation. This is passion, you have to give back something you have received in life,” he added.
Dr. Grandas sometimes traveled as a medical volunteer, other times as a pilot volunteer, or even fulfilling both functions.
This Wednesday, the Air Patrol mourned his death, that of his wife and that of Nuris Maza:
“Despite being a renowned transplant surgeon and a renowned career
in hospital and medical institutions (…) participated as a general surgeon in the medical surgical brigades of the PAC, with great generosity, humanity and professionalism, transforming the lives of people with needs for medical and surgical help and who had been waiting years for surgery in the most remote places of Colombia“.
In his travels his wife also accompanied him. The Patrol remembers the couple like this:
“His enthusiasm for the Patrol led him to also be interested in aviation and over the years he became passionate pilot and great traveling joy with his wife Maye, from our beloved Colombia“.
Fabio Grandas was known in the brigades as Dr. Grandas and as Capi. Fabio. This, his brigade and his house, won the King of Spain Award in 2017.
(You may be interested in: The Colombian Civil Air Patrol: 50 years leading life)
Those who worked with him admired how he struck a perfect balance between his three loves: transplant surgery, aviation and his family. “He managed his work team perfectly. Although he did his brigades, only once did he ask me for permission to travel to Spain. He was an organized, calm, cheerful and very professional man. When you asked for help, he was there, “says Dr. Julio Castellanos, director of the San Ignacio Hospital, who knew Grandas from his first steps in medicine at the National University. Currently, Grandas divided his time to work as a transplant surgeon kidney disease at the San Ignacio and the Santa Fe Foundation.
Surgeon Alejandro Niño Murcia also has fond memories of him. “We shared when I finished my specialization in General Surgery and he began a rotation in transplants, around 2002. But if you asked me, what struck me the most about him was how he managed to combine his passion for general surgery with that of flying and put it at the service of people “says Dr. Niño Murcia.
Grandas, say those close to him, took his work in surgery rooms as seriously as in airplane cabins. He was very clear that in both cases, he was the pilot of life.
In fact, in a 2017 conversation, Doctor Grandas referred to an air accident that also involved Patrol volunteers a year before he joined. On that occasion, the pilot Camilo Arenas, the pediatrician Andrés Gómez and a woman and her son died.
“It must be said that we have a number of security protocols”, Dr. Grandas said and detailed how previous expertise and security were key for everything to go well.
Although Grandas’ home was in the air and with his people in the brigades, since he became a father he dedicated much more time to his family.
However, for reasons still unknown, his last flight ended badly. Very bad. The plane in which he was traveling from Santa Marta to Bogotá collapsed this Tuesday at 5 pm
Aerocivil investigates what were the causes of the accident.
BOGOTA
