Thursday, August 10, 2017

When Lightning Struck

"I don't give up."


            Juliane Koepcke's white high heels matched the white fabric of her thin sleeveless summer mini-dress. She had just graduated from high school. That's why this seventeen-year-old was wearing one of her best outfits. She and her mother were flying on Christmas Eve 1971 to meet her father for the holidays.
            They were on Flight 508 from Peru's capital Lima to remote Pucallpa on the Amazon. Juliane was next to her mother in the window seat of a four-engine Lockheed Electra turboprop passenger plane. There were at 21,000-feet over the mountainous rainforest when—thirty-six minutes after the stroke of noon—in the midst of a furious storm, Juliane saw lightning—"a glistening light"—hit one of the engines on the plane's right wing.

Metal Confetti

            "This is the end of everything," she thought. The wing fell off. The plane nosedived. A huge roar filled the cabin as the fuselage shredded, bursting into metal confetti.
            Still strapped to her seat, her mother no longer by her side, Juliane remembers falling, falling, falling, the sky quiet around her. Then she looked down and saw the rainforest canopy—its trees as thickly packed "like green cauliflower, like broccoli"—rushing to meet her.
            When she woke up, she was upside down and still buckled in. Other than some gashes, a broken collarbone, and an eye swollen shut, she was unharmed. She cried out for her mother. No answer. She searched for her for a day. She saw no survivors or wreckage. She did find a bag of candy. She ate a piece and only one piece, saving the rest.
            As horrific as Juliane's situation was, she had one big advantage. She had grown up in the jungle with her biologist father, and her mother, an ornithologist. She knew what not to be afraid of. Animal sounds that might have terrified another teenager did not scare her. She knew how predators behaved and which insects and plants were the most dangerous.
            She heard planes overhead, but she knew they would never see her through the 'broccoli' overhead. She understood she would have to do something to survive.

She Knelt and Drank

            Incredibly thirsty, she licked drops of water off leaves. Then she saw a trickle of water. It was too pitiful to even be a stream. She knelt and drank. Her father had told her that if she were ever lost in the jungle to head downhill and follow water. It might grow into a stream, and the stream might grow into a river, and if she kept to the river, she might find a settlement or someone who would rescue her.
            Going forward would be hard. Though her injuries were relatively minor, she had lost her glasses and one of her sandals. For the next 11 days, she felt the blurry way ahead. The trickle did indeed turn into a stream, and the stream did indeed become a river, and she started swimming, knowing that piranhas congregate only in still water. She had few worries about the caiman alligators who might be prowling the current. Experience had taught her that they leave people alone.   
            The worst of her ordeal was the hunger (the bag of candy did not last long), the ceaseless rain, the cold chill of night, the millions of mosquitoes torturing her, and never knowing whether her odyssey would end in lonely death or rescue. "I don't give up," she told herself again and again.

A Bizarre Insect

            Wriggling leeches fixed themselves to her. A bizarre insect laid eggs in her skin. Days later its maggots were born and writhed in her flesh as they ate their way out. No matter how hard she tried with a stick, she could not force out the maddening worms.


            At last, she saw a primitive shelter on the riverbank, a motorboat moored there. Crawling ashore, she found a can of diesel fuel. She remembered seeing her father use gas to rid a dog of skin parasites. She dashed the vile smelling liquid on her body. She counted 35 worms emerge from one arm alone.

            Of the 92 passengers and crew on the plane, Juliane was the only one to leave the jungle alive. A few others, including her mother, had survived. None had been as bold as Juliane. (Her mother had been too injured too move.) Juliane took action, and her courage saved her life.

MORAL: Fortune favors the prepared mind.
Stay calm and look for a motorboat.

Buy the book "Courage 101: True Tales of Grit & Glory" at Amazon!

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