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Juliane Koepcke

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Juliane Koepcke
Born1954 (age 69–70)
Alma mater
OccupationMammalogist
Known forSurviving LANSA Flight 508

Juliane Koepcke (born 1954), also known by her married name Juliane Diller, is a German Peruvian mammalogist. As a teenager in 1971, Koepcke was the lone survivor of the LANSA Flight 508 plane crash, and then survived eleven days alone in the Amazon rainforest.

Early life

Koepcke was born in Lima, Peru, in 1954, to German parents who worked at the Museum of Natural History, Lima. She was the only child of biologist Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke and ornithologist Maria Koepcke. When Koepcke was 14, her parents decided to leave Lima and set up Panguana, a research station in the Amazon rainforest. She became a "jungle child" and learned survival techniques. Educational authorities disapproved and Koepcke was forced to return to the Deutsche Schule Lima Alexander von Humboldt to take her examinations. She passed the examinations and graduated on 23 December 1971.[1]

Crash

Main article: LANSA Flight 508

Koepcke's mother Maria was working in Lima when Koepcke graduated from high school. Maria wanted to return to Panguana on 19 or 20 December 1971, but Koepcke wished to attend her graduation ceremony on 22 December. Maria agreed and they instead scheduled a flight on Christmas Eve. All flights were booked, aside from one with Líneas Aéreas Nacionales S.A. (LANSA). LANSA had a poor reputation and Koepcke's father Hans-Wilhelm had previously urged Maria to avoid flying with the airline.[1]

The LANSA Lockheed L-188 Electra OB-R-941 commercial airliner was struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm and broke up in mid-air, disintegrating 3.2 kilometres (2.0 mi) above the ground. Koepcke, still strapped into her seat, survived the fall to Earth with a broken collarbone, a gash to her right arm, and her right eye swollen shut.[2] "I was definitely strapped in [the airplane seat] when I fell," she said later. "It must have turned and buffered the crash; otherwise I wouldn't have survived."[3]

Koepcke's first priority was to find her mother, who had been seated next to her, but her search was unsuccessful. She later discovered that her mother had initially survived the crash, but died from her injuries several days later.[4]

Koepcke found some sweets which became her only food. After looking for her mother and other passengers, she found a small stream. She waded through knee-high water downstream from her landing site, relying on the survival principle her father had taught her, that tracking downstream should eventually lead to civilization.[2]

After ten days, she found a boat moored near a shelter, and found the boat's fuel tank still partly full.[5] Koepcke poured the gasoline on her wounds, an action which succeeded in removing the maggots from her arm.[4] She later recounted her necessary efforts that day: "I remember having seen my father when he cured a dog of worms in the jungle with gasoline. I got some gasoline and poured it on myself. I counted the worms when they started to slip out. There were 35 on my arm. I remained there but I wanted to leave. I didn't want to take the boat because I didn't want to steal it."[6]

Because it was already dark, Koepcke slept in the tiny shelter, and in the morning a small group of local fishermen discovered her and brought her to their village.[7] The next day a local pilot volunteered to fly her to a hospital in Pucallpa.[8] The day after arriving at the hospital, Koepcke saw her father again: overcome with emotions, their reunion was "a moment without words".[9]

After she recovered from her injuries, Koepcke helped search parties to locate the crash site and the bodies of the victims. On 12 January 1972, the search parties discovered Maria Koepcke's body.[10]

Aftermath

I had nightmares for a long time, for years, and of course the grief about my mother's death and that of the other people came back again and again. The thought Why was I the only survivor? haunts me. It always will.

— Juliane Koepcke, 2010[3]

Koepcke's unlikely survival has been the subject of much speculation. It is known that she was seatbelted into her seat and thus somewhat shielded and cushioned, but it has also been theorized that the outer pair of seats – those on each side of Koepcke, which came attached to hers as part of a row of three – functioned like a parachute and slowed her fall.[2][11] The impact may also have been lessened by thunderstorm updraft and the landing site's thick foliage.[2][11]

She moved to Germany, where she fully recovered from her injuries. Like her parents, she studied biology at the University of Kiel, graduating in 1980.[12] She received a doctorate from Ludwig-Maximilian University and returned to Peru to conduct research in mammalogy, specializing in bats.[12] Koepcke published her thesis, Ecological study of a bat colony in the tropical rain forest of Peru, in 1987.[13] Now known as Juliane Diller, she serves as librarian at the Bavarian State Zoological Collection in Munich.[2] Her autobiography, Als ich vom Himmel fiel (When I Fell From the Sky), was released on 10 March 2011 by Piper Verlag,[14] for which she received the Corine Literature Prize in 2011.[15]

Portrayal in films

Koepcke's experience, having been widely reported, is the subject of one feature-length fictional film and one documentary. The first was the low-budget, heavily fictionalized I miracoli accadono ancora (1974) by Italian filmmaker Giuseppe Maria Scotese; it was released in English as Miracles Still Happen (1975) and is sometimes called The Story of Juliane Koepcke.[16]

Twenty-five years later, director Werner Herzog revisited the story in his film Wings of Hope (1998). In 1971, while location scouting for Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Herzog would have been on the same flight as Koepcke, but for a last-minute change of itinerary.[17] Koepcke accompanied him on a visit to the crash site, a journey she described as "a kind of therapy" for her.[18]

Works

  • Koepcke, Juliane (2011). Als ich vom Himmel fiel [When I fell from the sky] (in German). Munich: Piper Malik. ISBN 978-3-89029-389-9.
  • Koepcke, Juliane (2011). When I Fell From the Sky. Titletown Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9837547-0-1.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Williams, Sally (22 March 2012). "Sole survivor: the woman who fell to earth". The Telegraph.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Survivor still haunted by 1971 air crash". CNN.com. 2 July 2009. Archived from the original on 25 February 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2011. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |deadurl= ignored (|url-status= suggested) (help)
  3. ^ a b From an interview published in Vice, Sept. 2010: Littlewood, Tom (January 2011). "After the Fall". Harper's. 322 (1, 928). Harper's Foundation: 20–23. Retrieved 29 July 2011.
  4. ^ a b "Juliane Koepcke: How I survived a plane crash". BBC News. 24 March 2012. Retrieved 24 March 2012.
  5. ^ Banister, Matthew (2012). Outlook: Interview with Juliane Koepcke (Radio programme [mp3 file]). UK: BBC. Event occurs at 17:00.
  6. ^ "Survivor Didn't Want To Steal Boat". The News and Courier. 9 January 1972. Retrieved 11 January 2011.
  7. ^ Banister interview, 20:20.
  8. ^ Banister interview, 21:00.
  9. ^ Banister interview, 22:00.
  10. ^ "A 17 Year Old Girl Survived a 2 Mile Fall Without a Parachute, Then Trekked Alone 10 Days Through the Peruvian Rainforest". Todayifoundout.com.
  11. ^ a b Loup, Aldo (2013). "The incredible fall of Juliane Koepcke". Naturapop.com. Natura Pop. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  12. ^ a b Francois Vuilleumier (2002). "Hans-Wilhelm Koepcke". Ornitologia Neotropical. 13 (2): 215–218.
  13. ^ Juliane Koepcke (1987). Ökologische Studien an einer Fledermaus-Artengemeinschaft im tropischen Regenwald von Peru. OCLC 230848237. Retrieved 3 August 2011.
  14. ^ Diller, Juliane; Rygiert, Beate (2011). Als ich vom Himmel fiel: Wie mir der Dschungel mein Leben zurückgab. Malik. ISBN 978-3-89029-389-9.
  15. ^ "Corine Internationaler Buchpreis". Corine.de. National Exchange Association of Bavaria. 2013. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
  16. ^ "IMDb: The Story of Juliane Koepcke (1975)". Internet Movie Database. 2011. Retrieved 29 July 2011.
  17. ^ Herzog, Werner (2001). Herzog on Herzog. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-20708-1.
  18. ^ Banister interview, 24:20.
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