Story Of The 17yr-old Girl Who Fell 10,000ft From A Plane And Survived 10days Only In The Jungle.

Some stories are just so unbelievable and might sound like a myth to others, but the story of Julianne Koepcke, a German girl would in a way motivates every reader.

 

On a faithful Christmas Eve in the year 1971, Julianne along side her parents boarded a LANSA flight 508 at Lima Peru. They were traveling to Panguana after having attended Koepcke’s graduation ball in Lima on what would have only been just an your long flight.

 

Just about 30minutes after the flight took off, unfortunately they encountered a violent storm and all of sudden the plane was struck by a lightened and instantly began to break apart at which point Julianne heard her mother said "Now It's All Over" and passenger where seen falling from the plane into the Amazon jungle.

 

But Juliane Koepcke was strapped to her seat and that may have been what actually saved her life. She was sucked from the plane spiraling through the air, until she hit the jungle canopy, with the other two seats in her row still attached. . Surely the dense forest played no small part in making her landing softer than the landings of her fellow passengers.

 

Before Koepcke hit the ground she had lost consciousness. She awoke to a concussion, a broken collarbone, and cuts on her arm and leg. Miraculously, she was still able to walk and attempted to look for her mother and for other survivors, with no luck finding anything but jungle. Sadly her mother did not live to see her, she was reported to have died in the days or weeks following the crash (a fact which Juliane only found out decades later).

 

It seems unlikely that most people of her age would have been able to survive the ordeal. But Koepcke, with her unique childhood experiences had the skills to make her way through the Amazon.

 

Armed with a bag of sweets from the plane which she ate during here lonely journey.

 

 She then found a stream and followed it, reminded of her biologist father’s advice that it would always lead to a larger river and to people. She then followed the call of the hoatzin bird, which is found mainly near open waters, a fact she learned from her ornithologist mother, having grown up in the jungle in a hut on her parents’ research facility.

 

For 10 days she traveled through the jungle, often floating in the middle of the stream to avoid piranhas. Upon reaching a logging camp, Koepcke found some gasoline and used it to clean the wound on her arm, which by this point had become infected with maggots.

 

Many traveler has lost their life in the jungle due to the overwhelming heat and the sheer number of insects and animals that can cause bodily harm but Julianne was able to survive all that.

 

One could say that she was incredibly lucky that events happened as they did, barring the supremely unlucky fact that the plane was struck by lightening in the first place.

 

Years later Koepcke was interviewed and her story was used for the film "Wings of Hope" by Werner Herzog, a filmmaker who very nearly avoided dying in the same crash that Koepcke managed to survive. Herzog had tried to book a seat on the doomed Flight 508, but had been (fortunately) unsuccessful in doing so.

 

In another lucky turn, Koepcke was found unconscious by loggers, as they rarely visited the camp she was found.

 

she was the sole survivor among 91 other people on the plane.