Curiosities 26 - Survivors: Varig Flight 254 & The Curious Case of Juliane Koepcke
João Henrique Barboza Jorgetto • Mar 4, 2024
It was September 3rd when the Boeing 737 registration number PP-VMK departed Guarulhos bound for Belém, Pará, with stops along the way. On one of these stops, in Marabá, also in Pará, the aircraft was refueled and continued its final 50-minute journey, with 48 passengers and six crew, heading west instead of north.
Approaching the point where the destination would be, the pilot realized that something was wrong as they were unable to see the city, noting that some navigation error had occurred, in addition to the difficulty encountered in contacting the Belém control tower. It was a calm Sunday, and it stopped. Everyone was paying attention to the Brazilian team's game then, contributing to the failure to notice VMK's delay. The aircraft tried to contact other flights, trying to locate itself, but in the end, a forced landing in the middle of the forest was the only option, as the fuel was running low.
The landing took place at 9 pm, in a region of Xingu, with the strong impact of the aircraft with the trees causing the death of 12 people and injuring another 42. The slow reaction of the authorities caused even more problems for the survivors who were waiting for help near the wreckage of the plane. It took four injured survivors to walk 40 kilometers until they found someone to help them get help for the others. It was only on September 5th that the survivors were able to be rescued by the air force. Difficult, right? Well then, look at what young Juliane Koepcke went through.
Juliane Koepcke was a 17-year-old German girl who lived in Lima, Peru. As the daughter of Hans Wilhelm, an internationally renowned zoologist who studied animal life in the Amazon, Juliane was accustomed to air travel to various destinations. On one of these trips, on Christmas Eve 1971, the young woman experienced the worst story of her life.
After finishing high school, Juliane and her mother boarded a flight to Pucallpa to spend the festivities with her father. The Lockheed Electra belonging to the LANSA company that was carrying them began the already well-known customary shaking over the forest when the young woman and her mother enjoyed the snacks served by the crew. The trip went well until the plane began to go through a storm, transforming the slight jolts into strong turbulence. Juliane says that her distressed mother seemed to sense the worst, saying, "it's over," right when lightning struck one of the aircraft's engines, followed by the wings breaking off and the plane free-falling over the Amazon. The young woman only remembered the screams, the metallic noise and the wind hitting her body as the aircraft broke up in the air.
It wasn't Juliane's time, as she opened her eyes and found herself in the middle of the plane's wreckage, in the middle of the jungle! There is no official explanation for the possibility of a girl surviving the fall after her seat was thrown out of the plane, and what's worse, few serious injuries so far. The accident occurred around 1:30 am, while Juliane only regained consciousness late the following morning. When she woke up under her seat, without her seat belt buckled (yes...) and with pain in her back and legs, Juliane still couldn't see anything, as she was nearsighted and her glasses had been lost in the chaos. The pain was so great that she remembered fainting several times when trying to get up. As soon as he managed to do so, he tried to go out and look for his mother. Her eyes were worse than normal (the pressure generated in the accident burst the capillaries in the girl's eyes) and the constant fainting meant that her recovery time and complete return to consciousness took an entire day.
Finally standing while wandering through the jungle, the young woman realized that only she had survived, as the few she found along the way were the bodies of passengers. Stunned and without direction, Juliane then began to focus on her father's teachings about the jungle. Following a rule he taught her, she looked for water to follow the river's course as the people in the region permanently settled close to the waters. During four days of searching the jungle for a river, Juliane constantly found rows of planes full of bodies, hoping none were her mother's. She also found the passengers' belongings, including a package of cookies she took to eat, throwing them away later because they "tasted bad," an action she would regret later.
Juliane then heard the sound of search and rescue planes but could not attract their attention in the middle of the dense forest. He finally found a river and followed it, using the knowledge he learned from his father to survive. The young woman noticed that the animals there did not hide from her, indicating they were not used to the human presence in the place. They were curious monkeys that followed her for long stretches of the walk. Another factor that made her nervous was the presence of fallen logs in the river, a sign that the river was not navigable, concluding that she was still far from civilization. His health condition began to become worrying. Upon examining herself further, she noticed a deep cut on her leg a fracture in her right clavicle, and she began to feel itching in the wounds, as flies and insects from the forest were biting her all the time. Aware of this danger, Juliane began to worry when she realized she had Myiasis (the fly larvae now worsened her injuries). This condition, if not treated quickly, could lead to amputation of the affected limbs.
In the photo above, the young woman recovering after being found
After ten days in the jungle, without having anything to eat and only drinking water from the river, Juliane began to think about giving up. She was then so tired that she slept right there on the riverbank, exposed to more risks. Awakened with fright at dusk, Juliane ran into the woods looking for a place to stay for the night when she saw something that filled her with hope: a boat!
Right next to the boat, a trail was visible. Despite being very weak, Juliane then walked until she found a hut without walls containing a diesel engine and a barrel. The despair and pain of the larvae in her arm were so great that she used diesel oil from the engine to clean the wound. Of course, this caused mind-boggling pain, but it achieved its objective by killing the larvae. Feeling sleepy, she slept near the place she found and the next day, she had to wait for a heavy rain to stop before returning to the old cabin. Hungry, all she could find to eat were frogs and tree frogs that piled up in the puddles. Fortunately, she could not capture any, as it would undoubtedly be his end, as they were highly poisonous animals.
The next day, after hearing voices, Juliane was found by three men who, astonished, almost ran away when they saw the girl in the middle of the cabin. You understand, right? Imagine the state she was in. From there, they headed to the nearest town, where she was finally evaluated at a small local hospital. The damage to Juliane was much more significant than expected, with some broken bones, sprains and insect bites.
So that she could be better treated, she had to travel by plane to the city of Pucallpa, where she finally met her father.
Juliane in the most current photo
Juliane Koepcke's impressive story led to books and films and made her famous worldwide.