It was after the small plane crashed into the Bolivian jungle earlier last week that the real Calvary began for the survivors. After colliding with the ground, the aircraft overturned in an anaconda and alligator infested lagoon, plunging the pilot and four passengers-including a 6-year-old boy-in distressing 36 hours clinging to the plane’s wreckage before being rescued on Friday, 2, northeast of Bolivia.
The doctor who treated the five survivors told the Associated Press On Saturday, 3, that everyone was aware and in a stable condition, and only the 37 -year -old’s aunt remained hospitalized with an infected cut in the head. The others were discharged and were recovering from dehydration, light chemical burns, infected cuts, bruises and insect bites throughout the body.
“The alligators and snakes watched us all night”
“We couldn’t believe they were not attacked,” Luis Soruco, director of the hospital where the survivors were taken by Beni da Bolivia, after sending the pilot and two of the women home with a strong antibiotic treatment.
The pilot, Pablo Andrés Velarde, 27, told on Friday, 2, the story that has fascinated many Bolivians. “The mosquitoes didn’t let us sleep,” Velarde told reporters in his bed in the hospital in the provincial capital of Trinidad. Soruco said he was “surprisingly” with good health and mood. “The alligators and snakes watched us all night, but they didn’t approach.”
Surprised that the Camens, a kind of the Native Alligator family of Central America and the South, did not attack, Velarde speculated to be the smell of jet fuel spilling from the wreckage that had kept the prevailing reptiles at a distance. But there is no scientific evidence that it is an effective alligator repellent.
Velarde said the five survived eating cassava flour that one of the women had taken as a snack. They had nothing to drink, as the lagoon water was contaminated with gasoline.
Continues after advertising
The accident
The small plane had taken off on Wednesday, 30, from Vila Boliviana de Baures, bound for the largest town of Trinidad to the south, where Patricia Coria Guy had a medical appointment scheduled for her 6-year-old nephew at the Pediatric Hospital, Soruco said.
Two other women, neighbors, aged 32 and 54, joined them. This type of flight is a common means of transport in this remote Amazonian region cut by rivers. It is that intense rainfall floods, not paved roads this time of year.
But in just 27 minutes, almost half the flight time, the only engine of the plane stopped. Velarde said he reported the imminent drop by radio to a colleague.
Continues after advertising
In local media interviews, he said he had aimed at a clearing near a lagoon. “There was no farm or road on the route,” he said. “It was just a swamp.”
Instead of sliding down the bank as planned, the plane hit the floor and turned upside down, injuring all on board and leaving Guy Road with a especially deep cut in the forehead before diving into the water. “The landing was very sudden,” said Velarde.
As soon as the plane was flooded, the five managed to climb on the fuselage. There they remained for two terrifying nights, surrounded by Cainions and Anacondas and attacked by mosquito and other insect swarms. They waved shirts and sheets in vain and shouted each time they heard the sound of propellers or the snoring of a boat engine.
Continues after advertising
On Friday, 2, to the sound of speedboats approaching, “we started to light the flashlights of our cell phones and scream,” said Velarde. A group of fishermen noticed and helped them enter their canoe. They called the authorities and handed over the survivors to an army helicopter a few hours later. “We couldn’t stand it another night,” said Velarde.
