The story of a schoolgirl who fell into the jungle from a height of 3200 meters and survived

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 1971, a plane with 92 passengers on board disappeared over the Amazon jungle. During the flight, it was struck by lightning, the rescue team was unable to land - they circled over the crash site, and it was obvious that there were no survivors in such a crash: the plane crashed from a height of 3200 meters and shattered into pieces. All 86 passengers and 6 crew members were declared dead. However, after 10 days a girl came out of the jungle - the only survivor of this terrible accident.

Over two decades in the 1960s and 70s, the national airline LANSA suffered several accidents that killed more than 200 people. So, in 1966, the LANSA 501 plane crashed in the mountains, all 49 people on board were killed. Less than 4 years later, LANSA 502 fell under similar circumstances - there were 100 people on board, and two more died on the ground from the debris in the fall. So when LANSA 508 crashed in December 1971 and fell in the middle of a completely impenetrable jungle, rescuers were sure there were no survivors.

The aircraft carried 6 crew members and 86 passengers, including bird watcher Maria Koepcke from Germany and her 17-year-old daughter Juliane Koepcke, who had celebrated her graduation from school just a day earlier. They both flew to the city of Pucallpa to meet with Maria's husband, Juliana's dad, the golden Hans-Wilhelm Köpke, who was conducting research in the Amazon jungle.

40 minutes after takeoff, the crew saw a thunderstorm in front of them and decided to follow through - alas, it was because of this decision that the disaster happened. Lightning struck the wing of the plane and the ship crashed down into the rainforest. A heavy downpour extinguished the fire that had arisen, and the plane itself was scattered into parts while still in the air during the fall, so that, having fallen down, relatively small parts of the plane were completely invisible from the air under the dense canopy of trees. Subsequently, the rescue teams often circled over this place, but they could not determine the exact place of the plane crash.

Juliana woke up, still strapped to her chair. The clock on her wrist read 9 a.m., which meant she was unconscious for almost a day. The girl was alive, but by no means unharmed: her collarbone was severely damaged, her eyes were swollen, her body was covered with numerous cuts, the strongest of them was on her leg, and a severe concussion led to the fact that the girl continually lost consciousness and was severely nauseous.

It took Juliana several days only to recover enough to be able to move. In addition to a severe headache and general shock, the girl also had myopia, and her glasses were broken. Fearing to meet a poisonous snake, she first threw her shoes in front of her, and only then took a step forward. This greatly slowed her progress, but ensured her from meeting with deadly animals.

However, the girl first tried to find other survivors. She called her mother, but no one answered her. When the girl found several well-studied corpses, her hope of finding her mother alive disappeared. Juliana searched for food in the wreckage, but was only able to find candy. With them, she went to the nearest gorge, along the bottom of which a small stream flowed. As it turned out later during the investigation, in fact, another 14 people survived in that disaster, but they all died in the following days even before help arrived.

The knowledge gained from her father allowed the girl not to give up and move forward. She knew that the stream would eventually lead her to the river, and one way or another along the water, sooner or later she must meet a settlement of people. Moving along the stream was much easier than through the jungle, although the likelihood of encountering venomous snakes was also higher. Juliana's wounds, meanwhile, have festered, and larvae have wound up in them. Unable to eat normally, the girl ate what little seemed safe and edible to her.

10 days after the disaster, the girl's despair reached its climax - from exhaustion and weakness, she was ready to give up and no longer go anywhere. When Juliana suddenly saw a motor boat and a can of gasoline standing next to the river bank. Even before she realized that the boat meant the presence of people somewhere nearby, she hurried to the can of gasoline. Once her father, with the help of gasoline, helped their lost dog, which returned with wounds and parasites in it. It was the painful wounds and the worms swarming in them that plagued the girl most of all these days, preventing her from sleeping at night.

Juliana doused the wound on her shoulder and leg with gasoline, causing the worms to crawl out. The girl began to take them out one by one and count them. She counted 35 parasites. She was afraid to go anywhere from the boat - she hoped that soon people would come. And she did not go on the boat herself - she did not want people to think that she had stolen the boat.

Fortunately, in a few hours the locals did indeed come. The girl looked so terrible that they did not even dare to approach her right away - the guest looked more like some forest spirit from local beliefs than a living person. Fortunately, Juliana knew not only her native German, but also Spanish, so she was able to explain what happened to her. The men took the girl to their village, where they gave her first aid, and then for another 7 hours they took her by boat to the village where there was an airport to transport the victim to Pucallpa.

12 days after the disaster, Juliana finally met her father and was able to receive professional medical attention. The news of the only survivor quickly spread throughout the country, and journalists began to besiege the hospital, making their way to her ward in every conceivable and inconceivable way. The girl was not very eager to talk about her experiences over and over again. She already had to tell the police about everything that happened - in particular, it was thanks to her testimony that the rescuers eventually managed to find out the place of the plane crash. Unfortunately, when the rescue team arrived at this location, all of the surviving passengers had already died.

As a result, Juliana followed in her parents' footsteps - she trained as a biologist in Germany and later returned to Peru to continue studying the Amazonian forests. At the age of 57, she published How I Fell From Heaven, based on her memories of that terrible catastrophe. “You know, I had nightmares for a long time,” Juliana recalls in an interview on the eve of the release of her biography. “For several years I still grieved over the loss of my mother and all those people who died that day. I thought, why I was the only one who survived? These thoughts haunted me for years. And, probably, they will always haunt me."

A year later, in 1972, another tragedy occurred, which was destined to go down in history. The plane carrying the rugby team from Uruguay to Chile crashed in the snowy Andes. Of the 45 people on board, 12 lost their lives immediately, and five more died the next day. The rest awaited a cruel fate.