| What's the most unbelievable thing that has ever happened in the history of mankind that makes it difficult to grasp the reality that the event occurred? The Girl who fell from the Sky Seventeen-year-old Juliane Koepcke received her high school diploma just 24 hours before the crash (Woman describes what it was like to be the only survivor of a flight obliterated by a thunderstorm) Juliane Koepcke had no idea what was in store for her when boarded LANSA Flight 508 on Christmas Eve in 1971.[1] The 17-year-old was traveling with her mother from Lima, Peru to the eastern city of Pucallpa to visit her father, who was working in the Amazonian Rainforest. Juliane Koepcke was born in Lima on Oct. 10, 1954. Both of her parents were German zoologists who moved to Peru to study wildlife ( world-renowned zoologist (Hans-Wilhelm) and an equally revered ornithologist (Maria).[2] She had received her high school diploma the day before the flight and planned to study zoology like her parents. Maria, Julianne and Hans Koepcke (40 Years After Plane Goes Down In Amazon, Woman Tells How She Survived) The flight was meant to be an hour long. Seated in 19F (second to last row), it was a smooth ride until the clouds grew darker and turbulence got worse.[3] Suddenly, the plane was in the midst of a massive thunderstorm. At this point, the plane was in a swirl of pitch black clouds and flashes of lightning glistened through the windows. "Then I saw a glistening light on the right wing and my mother said: "Now it's over."[4]When a lightning bolt struck the motor, the plane broke into pieces. Then everything sped up. "What really happened is something you can only try to reconstruct in your mind," said Koepcke.[5] There were the noises of people's screams and the motor until all she could hear was the wind in her ears. Flight path and the crash site of LANSA Flight 508 (The Incredible Story Of Juliane Koepcke, The Teenager Who Fell 10,000 Feet And Trekked The Jungle For 11 Days) Still strapped to her seat, Koepcke had only realized she was free-falling for a few moments before she lost consciousness. She fell 10,000 feet down into the middle of the Peruvian rainforest. "The only thing that made me nervous, or let's say concerned me, was this little patch on my upper arm. It wasn't any tragic wound or anything, but it was small and open and flies had laid their eggs in it. The maggots hatched underneath my skin and ate a hole into my arm." Even though her life was spared, she was still badly injured–her collarbone was broken, there was a deep cut on her leg, and she was suffering from a severe concussion.[6] She would spend the next 11 days struggling to stay alive. "When I regain consciousness, I've landed in the middle of the jungle. My seat belt is unfastened, so I must have woken up at some point. I've crawled deeper into the sheltering back of the three-seat bench that was fastened to me when I fell from the sky. Wet and muddy, I lie there for the rest of the day and night." When she awoke the next morning, the concussion in conjunction with the shock only allowed for her to process basic facts. She had survived a plane crash. She couldn't see very well out of one eye. Then she slipped back into unconsciousness. It took half a day for Koepcke to fully get up. Even though Koepcke woke up underneath her seat, she had to have landed on top of it. In the documentary, she offers three explanations for how she survived what easily could have been a deadly fall. 1. During storms, sometimes heavy winds blow upward, which may have slowed down her fall. 2. She may have been attached to one end of the seat and, not unlike a maple seed, swirled down instead of a falling in a straight line. 3. The dense tangle of lianas covering the trees cushioned the final moments of her fall.[7] She set out to find her mother, but she was unsuccessful. After she was rescued, she learned that her mother and the man sitting by the aisle had both been propelled out of their seats.[8] Her mother had also survived the initial fall, but soon died from her injuries. In the midst of looking for her mother, Koepcke had come across a small well.[9] She was feeling rather hopeless at this point, but then she recollected some survival advice given to her by her father: if you see water, follow it downstream. That's where civilization is. "A small stream will flow into a bigger one and then into a bigger one and an even bigger one, and finally you'll run into help."[10] The Hoatzin: A Weird and Wonderful Bird Koepcke remembers hearing the unmistakable call of a hoatzin ( native to Panguana) , a subtropical bird that nests exclusively near open stretches of water and people.[11] As the sun set each night, Koepcke would search for a reasonably safe spot on the bank to rest. Besieged by mosquitoes and small flies called midges buzzing around her head and crawling into her ears and nose, Koepcke struggled to find protection from nightly rainstorms and wind. During the day, she swam downstream, drinking river water to hold off the constant pangs of hunger. After a few days, her back was covered with second degree burns from the sun.[12] So began her journey down the stream. Sometimes she walked, sometimes she swam. Initially, Koepcke found no traces of the crash. No wreckage, no people, only a bag of candy that she carefully rationed, a Panettone, a type of sweet bread, that was soaked and had mud all over it. It tasted so bad that she left it where she found it.[13] On the fourth day of her trek, she came across three fellow passengers still strapped to their seats, drilled into the ground.[14] The impact must have been so hard that it drilled itself three feet deep into the ground. Koepcke had already sensed that she'd come across dead bodies because she had heard this noise before, the sound that king vultures make when they land. " King vultures are big condors, the biggest new-world vultures in South America, and I knew this sound because I had lived at my parents' station for one and a half years prior to the crash. When I heard that sound, I knew there must have been a big dead animal or human somewhere nearby."[15] The Double Survival Miracle of Juliane Koepcke It was around this time that Koepcke heard and saw rescue planes and helicopters above, yet her attempts to draw their attention were unsuccessful. "It was a feeling of hopelessness. I wasn't in pain or panic, but I knew that I had to rely on my own strength to get out of there. I didn't know that the river that I'd found was uninhabited and I was still hoping to find help soon because it was such a wide river. But then as the day moved along I felt that it was strange that the wild animals were so tame: monkeys, martens, brocket deer—you wouldn't normally see them. Plus, there were lots of fallen trees in the water, which is an indicator that a river isn't traveled. That made me think, but then I blocked those thoughts out—of there possibly not being any help out there."[16] The plane crash prompted the biggest search in Peru's history, but due to the density of the forest, the aircrafts couldn't spot wreckage from the crash, let alone a single person.[17] After some time she couldn't hear them and knew that she was truly on her own to find help. After ten days of drifting down the river, Koepcke saw a boat on the gravelly bank and began walking and eventually crawling up a beaten path to a hut and decided to rest in it, where she recalls thinking she'd probably die alone in the jungle.[18] The hut lacked walls, just a floor made from palm bark, covered with a roof.[19] Koepcke found a motor and a barrel containing diesel, covered with a plastic tarp. She found a small tube for sucking up diesel, which she poured into her wound to disinfect and dislodge maggots.[20] The pain was agonizing. She patiently waited for the owner of the boat and shack to return. Then she heard voices. And not imaginary voices. They belonged to three Peruvian missionaries who lived in the hut. "The first man I saw seemed like an angel," said Koepcke.[21] Juliane Koepcke is pictured days after being found lying under the hut in the middle of the forest after trekking through the jungle for 10 days. (Woman describes what it was like to be the only survivor of a flight obliterated by a thunderstorm.) "I'm a girl who was in the LANSA crash," I say in Spanish. "My name is Juliane."[22] The men didn't quite feel the same way. They were slightly frightened by her, and at first thought the could be a water spirit they believed in called Yemanjábut.[23] Still, they let her stay there for another night and the following day they took her by boat to a local hospital located in a small nearby town. After she was treated for her injuries, Koepcke was reunited with her father.[24] She also helped authorities locate the plane and over the course of a few days they were able to find and identify the dead bodies. Because she was heavily questioned by the air force and the police, in addition to being thrown into the media spotlight, the mourning and grief didn't register until later. Everything she had been through, her injuries, the loss of her mother. Koepcke developed a deep fear of flying and for years had recurring nightmares. Of the 91 people aboard, Juliane Koepcke was the sole survivor. It was later determined that as many as 14 other passengers also survived the fall from the plane but died awaiting rescue.[25] Eventually Koepcke went on to study biology at the University of Kiel in Germany in 1980 and then received her doctorate degree.[26] She returned to Peru to do research in mammalogy and later married. Juliane Koepcke standing in front of a piece of the plane wreckage over two decades later. In 1998, she returned to the site of the crash for the documentary Wings of Hope about her incredible story.[27] On her flight with director Werner Herzog, she once again sat in seat 19F. Koepcke found the experience to be therapeutic. It was the first time she was able to focus on the incident from a distance and in a way, gain a sense of closure that she still hadn't gotten. The experience also prompted her to write a memoir on her remarkable tale of survival called When I Fell From the Sky .Despite overcoming the trauma of the event, there's one question that lingered with her: why was she the only survivor? It continues to haunt her. She said in the film, "It always will."[28] Footnotes [1]Woman describes what it was like to be the only survivor of a flight obliterated by a thunderstorm[2]http://Francois Vuilleumier (2002). "Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke". Ornitologia Neotropical. 13 (2): 215–218.[3]Survivor still haunted by 1971 air crash[4]The Woman Who Fell to Earth[5]The Woman Who Fell to Earth[6]The Incredible Teenage Girl who Survived a 10,000ft Plane Crash Freefall[7]http://(Woman describes what it was like to be the only survivor of a flight obliterated by a thunderstorm
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