Sudan aircrash kills Wirral charity worker

Wirral Globe (UK)
July 16, 2003

A WIRRAL-born charity worker died when a Boeing 737 crashed in the Sudan last week.

In all, 116 passengers and crew perished in the tragedy on July 8. Just one person, a two-year-old boy, survived the impact.

Nick Meadows, 50, who was originally from Irby but had been living in Taos, New Mexico, was killed instantly when the plane crashed shortly after take-off from the Port Sudan airport.

The Sudan Airways flight had been heading towards the capital Khartoum but had only been travelling for three miles when the captain reported trouble, said the airline’s director Ismail Zumray.

A fire consumed the aircraft and such was the devastation that local authorities, following Muslim tradition, buried all the victims soon after in a mass grave.

Mr Meadows had been working in the Sudan as Oxfam’s emergency co-ordinator, a post he had held for the previous four months organising food and humanitarian aid to over 140,000 desperate Sudanese.

He was en-route to the capital, Khartoum, prior to taking a short well-earned rest in Egypt when the crash occurred.

Educated at Dawpool School in Thurstaston and Calday Grange Grammar School, he then went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, to study history, to Sussex University for a sociology MA, and finally began a PhD at Hull University where his links with the Sudan, and expertise in Third World agriculture and aid, began to develop.

His brother Andy told the Globe: “Nick was a totally committed aid worker for the Sudan and elsewhere in Africa.”