tha kate

lickypickystickyfree:

A most amazing (and shocking!) interview with this lady Juliane Koepcke who survived a plane crash, free falling, still strapped in her seat, from the sky.

An excerpt:

How did the trouble begin?
The clouds became thicker. I used to love flying, so I didn’t really pay that much attention to the weather. Then my mother started getting nervous and said, “I don’t like this.” The clouds became darker and darker and the flight became more turbulent. Then we were in the midst of pitch-black clouds and a proper storm with thunder and lightning.

Were the other passengers as nervous as your mother?
My mother wasn’t exactly nervous. She was merely concerned, but you couldn’t really tell from the outside. The other passengers were still calm. They weren’t happy about it, but you couldn’t really feel that. It was pitch-black all around us and there was constant lightning. Then I saw a glistening light on the right wing and my mother said: “Now it’s over.” The motor was hit by lightning. This machine had turbines with propellers. After that, everything went super-fast. What really happened is something you can only try to reconstruct in your mind. We only found out later that turboprop Electra machines weren’t designed for this kind of heavy turbulence. Their wings are too stiff. The bolt that hit the plane probably caused it to break up in midair, because it definitely didn’t explode.

When your mother said, “Now it’s over,” did that comment mean anything to you at all?
No, I didn’t really have the chance to think about it. I registered it and then I had a blackout. There’s one thing I remember: I heard the incredibly loud motor and people screaming and then the plane fell extremely steeply. And then it was calm—incredibly calm compared with the noise before that. I could only hear the wind in my ears. I was still attached to my seat. My mother and the man sitting by the aisle had both been propelled out of their seats. I was free-falling, that’s what I registered for sure. I was in a tailspin. I saw the forest beneath me—like “green cauliflower, like broccoli,” is how I described it later on. Then I lost consciousness and regained it only way later, the next day.

What did you feel while all of this happened? Was it terror, or were you in shock?
I wasn’t scared; I didn’t have time for that. Even while I was falling I wasn’t afraid. I just realized that the seatbelt was putting pressure on my stomach and my head was upside down. But that’s about it—it was probably only fractions of a second. Or maybe I blocked it out. Either way, I don’t remember it.

Did you come across dead bodies?
Yes, once. It was the fourth day after the crash. I found a row of seats, drilled into the ground. The impact must have been so hard that it drilled itself three feet deep into the ground. The three people strapped into these seats must have been killed right away. That was an ugly moment. It was the second time I had ever seen a dead body. 

 I couldn’t really see that much, only people’s feet pointing up. I poked their feet with a stick.
I couldn’t touch the dead bodies. I couldn’t smell anything and they hadn’t been eaten yet or started to decay. I mean, sure, decay must have started, but I couldn’t notice it. I could tell it was a woman because she had polished toenails and the others must have been two men, judging by their pants and shoes. I moved on after a while, but in the first moment after finding them, it was like I was paralyzed.

Complete interview here.

Incredible. 

(via lickystickypickywe)