Juliane Koepcke ‘several days’ after being rescued by lumberworkers in the Peruvian rainforest after wandering for 10 days in that jungle after falling 9200ft into it from the wreckage of an aeroplane that broke-up aloft over it through being struck by lightning … therefore 1972 January [840×587].
This post was inspired by this post by u/cicknokkinos of Vesna Vulovic’s miraculous survival, who also fell from an aeroplane. I told the person who posted that that I would make a post of this incident if I could find a picture reasonably contemporary with it … and I have done!
She was 17 at the time: & the aeroplane was a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop, running LANSA Flight 508 – a flight completely internal to Peru – from Lima to Pucallpa; & on 1971 December 24^th the plane was struck by lightning as it traversed a thunderstorm that the pilot for some reason did not circumvene, and as a result of the ensuing failure of its vital systems & the buffeting of the storm disintegrated aloft at 9200ft (not very high, as it wasn’t going very far – although it probably makes no difference to the severity of the impact of a fall from about that height & above); & she’d wandered for 11 days when she was found by the lumberworkers.
Her survival was at first a matter of extraordinary luck: it’s surmised that the strong updraught of the storm slowed her descent (9200ft is easily enough height for a person strapped into an aeroplane seat to reach terminal velocity in; so as mentioned above, someone falling from 9200ft has no more chance of survival of the ensuing impact with the ground than someone falling from any greater height); and it’s also believed that she was prettymuch upright when she entered the canopy & was therefore protected by the seat from being torn exceedingly by the branches. Some have even advanced the hypothesis that the seat (it was actually a short row of seats) was slowed by some particular aerodynamic effect such as slow winged seeds, by causing them to spin, when they fall from trees … but that is far from known … but Juliane did report seeing the canopy spin beneath her as she fell … & before she lost consciousness.
But luck yielded to heroism & a generous admixture of knowledge in her ensuing survival of her eleven days in the jungle, amongst all manner of venemous fauna, malnutrition, sheer being utterly lost, etc; and she managed to make her way in the end to a settlement of kindly lumberworkers (‘kindly’ if you aren’t a tree, at least!) who tended her until she was fit to be conveyed elsewhere.
It could be deemed rather quaint, though, that atfirst they thought she was somekind of river-spirit! … although we might consider – we who live in houses serviced by roads & electricity & stuff – that we also would not be so quick to deny the existence of such things if we were to abide for any length-of-time in such an environment!
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If anyone is particular about the discrepancy between the "10 days" in the title & the "11 days" in the text, I think what happens in accounts of this is that some include the time she lay unconscious at the crash-site + the time in which she was sequestered exhausted in the lumberworkers’ hut: the time of actual wandering through the jungle was about 10 days.
PerryPattySusiana
This post was inspired by this post by u/cicknokkinos of Vesna Vulovic’s miraculous survival, who also fell from an aeroplane. I told the person who posted that that I would make a post of this incident if I could find a picture reasonably contemporary with it … and I have done!
She was 17 at the time: & the aeroplane was a Lockheed L-188A Electra turboprop, running LANSA Flight 508 – a flight completely internal to Peru – from Lima to Pucallpa; & on 1971 December 24^th the plane was struck by lightning as it traversed a thunderstorm that the pilot for some reason did not circumvene, and as a result of the ensuing failure of its vital systems & the buffeting of the storm disintegrated aloft at 9200ft (not very high, as it wasn’t going very far – although it probably makes no difference to the severity of the impact of a fall from about that height & above); & she’d wandered for 11 days when she was found by the lumberworkers.
Her survival was at first a matter of extraordinary luck: it’s surmised that the strong updraught of the storm slowed her descent (9200ft is easily enough height for a person strapped into an aeroplane seat to reach terminal velocity in; so as mentioned above, someone falling from 9200ft has no more chance of survival of the ensuing impact with the ground than someone falling from any greater height); and it’s also believed that she was prettymuch upright when she entered the canopy & was therefore protected by the seat from being torn exceedingly by the branches. Some have even advanced the hypothesis that the seat (it was actually a short row of seats) was slowed by some particular aerodynamic effect such as slow winged seeds, by causing them to spin, when they fall from trees … but that is far from known … but Juliane did report seeing the canopy spin beneath her as she fell … & before she lost consciousness.
But luck yielded to heroism & a generous admixture of knowledge in her ensuing survival of her eleven days in the jungle, amongst all manner of venemous fauna, malnutrition, sheer being utterly lost, etc; and she managed to make her way in the end to a settlement of kindly lumberworkers (‘kindly’ if you aren’t a tree, at least!) who tended her until she was fit to be conveyed elsewhere.
It could be deemed rather quaint, though, that atfirst they thought she was somekind of river-spirit! … although we might consider – we who live in houses serviced by roads & electricity & stuff – that we also would not be so quick to deny the existence of such things if we were to abide for any length-of-time in such an environment!
++++++++++++
If anyone is particular about the discrepancy between the "10 days" in the title & the "11 days" in the text, I think what happens in accounts of this is that some include the time she lay unconscious at the crash-site + the time in which she was sequestered exhausted in the lumberworkers’ hut: the time of actual wandering through the jungle was about 10 days.
Robot8000
the comma does exist?