Sole survivor recounts the ordeal in the air

By Amal HEWAVISSENTI

It was real life drama on the high skies and jungle. A terrible plane crash occurred just above Amazon rain forest in 1971 and Juliana Koepke, a German girl managed to save her life. Juliana Koepke was the sole survivor of the agonising ordeal in the air in which all air crew, her mother and schoolchildren going home for vacation died without trace.

Recently several books and articles based on this appalling plane crash attracted the notice of general readers and some documentary films provided factual information about the accident.

"Wings of Hope" (screened in 2000) is a film based on Juliane's own experiences in the air crash and her subsequent battle to search for a human sign in the depth of Amazon. The film has been masterfully created by Warner Hershog a famous film director.

Juliane, still alive, recollects the plane crash which deprived her of her roving mother and some of her friends. Juliana Koepke was, by then, a seventeen year old German girl who had graduated from high school of Lima. On the fateful day (24 December 1971) Juliane, accompanied by her mother got on the Jet plane-508 belonging to Lanza Airlines.

A part from that, the plane was to carry 92 passengers including the air crew and some 62 schoolchildren expecting to visit their homes just on the eve of Christmas.

Juliane and her mother were eagerly waiting for a happy vacation of merry reunion with her father Hans Koepke who was a famous biologist. Moreover, she was highly impatient to stroll in the evenings along the paths in the farm newly bought by her father.

The plane which had taken off from the George Chavez international airport in the city of Lima, was flying to the western city of Pucallpa. She was sitting by the window as she highly appreciated the dangerous but captivating sight of different landscapes far below. She was, at the sametime, listening to what her mother had to speak about their plan to move into the new house built in the farm.

The plane was intermittently obstructed by bad weather that showed imminent threat of a storm. By this time the plane was flying some 21,000 feet from the ground level and was battling against the stormy conditions which kept on blocking its progress. Quite unexpectedly, the pilot found that the plane was being engulfed by a fierce storm with lightening.

The next moment the plane was violently jerked in its movement as a lightening accompanied by thunder struck the left wing of the plane. Another thunder bolt struck the fuel tank and it burst out into a huge fire in the air.

The increasing fire immediately put the operative systems of the plane out of order but the air crew including the pilot made every possible effort to bring the plane to normalcy.

They seemed to be completely unaware of the damage being inflicted on the operative systems inside the plane by the raging fire. When the fire spread onto the other wing, the plane began to come down rapidly because the inner structure of the plane had already been irreparably damaged.

The air crew thus failed in every attempt to keep the plane in the air and gave up all hopes for life. She relives her memories of the catastrophe.

"Inside the plane, we noticeably felt the heat. I frenziedly clung to my mother and as the plane was moving headlong down,. I realised that we were left with no other option than to die in the air.

I vaguely heard my mother screaming "this is the end of everything. We're done for!" suddenly I watched, with disbelief, a burning wing being ripped of the plane. I saw the ball of fire (the wing) floating in the sky towards the ground below.

All of a sudden, I found myself being hurled with my seat off the plane, through the window. I was on my seat with seat belts fastened.

This completely shut off my memory of what happened later......"The dreadful air crash brought destruction to all passengers including Juliane's mother and schoolchildren.

She was fortunate enough to be the only survivor. Juliane Koepke 'floated' for about two miles in the sky with her seat fastened to her. She hardly remembered where the burning plane had fallen and what she could recall was that she was floating towards the Amazon forest far below.

Juliane, with her seat, slowly sank into the great Amazon forest. Nobody had detected the exact place of the forest where she had fallen from the sky. Her left eye had gone half blind and she had sustained a deep cut in her right arm.

After about one hour, she regained her consciousness and what she saw around her greatly baffled her into the notion that she was at the jaws of death in the middle of a perilous jungle. This is how she recounts the second drama in the Amazon forest.

"I had to sustain myself on leaves or many kinds of unknown fruit in the jungle for about nine days.

When hunger struck me beyond my powers of tolerance, I ate whatever fruit or leaves without even wondering whether they are poisonous or not. I was slowly getting the notion that the forest would soon bring me sudden death.

I had the bitter most experiences with mosquitoes, leeches, and all types of harmful insects. I spent almost sleepless nights in the forest without even a trace of man.

The greatest challenge was to ward off certain animals and slow but most dangerous insects which were all the time trying to prey on me."

"One night I had fallen asleep on a decayed log due to heavy fatigue. Suddenly I woke-up on a current of pain in my leg and saw a colony of black ants beginning to attack me. I noticed that a few red spots on my leg began to bleed a few minutes later. The forest proved a hell..."

Meanwhile, Hans Koepke, Juliane's father was making every possible effort to track down his daughter's whereabouts following the fatal plane crash. Ultimately he came to the place where the burning plane wreck lay with the bodies of the passengers.

He at once identified his loving wife's burnt body with fragments of her dress. Hans Koepke, with the support from the police and responsible officers from the Lanza Airline, launched a search operation for his missing daughter but to no avail.

Nobody knew that Juliane, with the seat to which she was fastened with seat belts, had been hurled off the plane and had fallen into the deep forest almost unhurt. However, she had fallen into the Amazon almost three miles off the place where the plane wreck, together with the dead bodies of the passengers lay ablaze.

Meanwhile, Juliane spotted a wooden house built by wood cutters in the Amazon forest. She recalls.

"As I entered the small house, I fainted. When I recovered consciousness, I saw a group of wood cutters beside me. They looked amazed at the sight of a girl in their hut. On their request.

I recounted the whole story of the catastrophic plane crash and to my relief, they looked sympathetic. They took steps to administer first aid on me. First they cleaned my wounds.

The deep cut on my right arm had by now come to a worse condition.

They poured gasoline oil on my wound.

My blood ran cold when they said that a family of leeches were living in the would. After the wound was washed with gasoline, I saw that thirty six young leeches were coming out of the wound in a twisting way. It was utterly horrible experience to have seen my own wound as the abode for a family of leeches....""The wood cutters then got me onto a boat and took me along the river Lumber |Rail way station at Vista. The journey by river took about ten hours.

However I was hospitalised at Pucallpa. A few hours later I was fortunate to see my father at the hospital...."Recently Juliana now a PHD holder, visited the site of the dreadful plane crash and the burnt remains of the parts of the plane. She maintains that the air crash virtually rendered them helpless solely because of the loss of her mother who had been a massive strength to the family.