A teen was the only survivor of a plane crash, then survived 11 days in the jungle thanks to what her parents taught her.
On Christmas Eve 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke was flying home to her parents’ research station in the Peruvian rainforest together with her mother Maria.
Juliane and her mother were on LANSA Flight 508 from Lima to Pucallpa when the plane flew into a violent thunderstorm. Lightning struck, and the aircraft broke apart in mid-air.
Hours after the crash, Juliane woke up all alone on the jungle floor, still strapped into her seat. She was the only survivor out of more than 90 people on board.
A plane torn apart by lightning
Experts still can’t fully explain how she survived. One theory is that the row of seats she was strapped into spun like a helicopter blade and slowed her fall, and the thick jungle canopy cushioned her landing.
She woke up with a broken collarbone, a deep cut on her arm, a swollen eye and no glasses. Her mother was gone.
“It’s not the green hell that the world always thinks”
What saved the 17-year-old was her unusual childhood. Juliane’s parents, zoologists Hans-Wilhelm and Maria Koepcke, ran a research station called Panguana deep in the rainforest, and Juliane grew up there.
“I learned a lot about life in the rainforest, that it wasn’t too dangerous,” she told the BBC in 2012. “It’s not the green hell that the world always thinks.” Even concussed, she recognized the sounds around her, the frogs and birds she knew from home, and realized she was in familiar territory.
The lesson from her father
Her father had taught her one rule: if you’re lost in the jungle, find water and follow it downstream, because streams lead to rivers and rivers lead to people. So she walked, and when she could, she waded and swam down the middle of the river, where her father had told her piranhas were less of a threat than in the shallows.
It was the rainy season. She was soaked and cold at night, and the only food she had was a small bag of sweets she found near the crash site. The wound on her arm became infested with maggots.
Day 11: a boat and a hut
After 11 days, she found a boat moored at the riverbank and a small hut nearby. Inside was some gasoline, which she poured onto her wound to get the maggots out. The next day, local fishermen returned to the hut and found her. They took her to safety and reunited her with her father.
Juliane went on to become a biologist herself. As Dr. Juliane Diller she studies bats and has run Panguana, which is now a protected nature reserve. She told her re story in the memoir When I Fell From the Sky, and director Werner Herzog, who was nearly on the same flight himself, made a documentary with her, Wings of Hope.
More than 50 years later, the girl who fell from the sky is still protecting the jungle that saved her.
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