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Woman believed killed in Peru crash found alive

Posted on: Friday, 26 August 2005, 12:02 CDT

By Mariana Bazo

PUCALLPA, Peru (Reuters) - A Peruvian woman believed killed when a plane plowed into a jungle swamp has been found in a hospital, reducing the number of victims to 39 and bringing that of survivors to 59, the airline said on Friday.

A 28-year-old woman, whose name was not released, was found by her husband in a hospital in Pucallpa, near where the Boeing 737-200 crashed in a freak hailstorm as it came in to land, said a spokesman for state-owned airline TANS who declined to give his name.

The woman has been transferred to Lima, where she was in serious condition and on a ventilator. Her son, who was traveling with her, was reported to have undergone surgery in the capital.

The crash killed 32 Peruvians, three Americans, one man and two women; a Spanish woman: a Colombian woman; an Australian woman and an Italian man, said Jorge Belevan, a second TANS spokesman.

Only six of the dead, all Peruvians, have not been identified, said Belevan. Their bodies are in the morgue of the steamy northern jungle town of Pucallpa.

The plane was reduced to chunks of charred rubble and body parts were strewn about, yet more than half the 98 passengers and crew miraculously survived.

Survivors, including a 9-year-old girl who rescued her baby cousin and a man who watched his skin shrivel as a fireball swept the plane, told stories of heroism and horror, including how a baby was plucked from the mud.

Rescue workers resumed their search early on Friday for the second black box, which could provide clues about an accident officials have said may have been caused by bad weather or an error by the pilot, who died.

Torrential rain and lightning interrupted search efforts on Thursday. Police and soldiers were also hampered by hundreds of bounty-hunters, who swarmed over the chaotic wreckage, grabbing anything of value.

People have been seen walking through town, carrying airline sheets and metal rods, and locals said aircraft parts were being sold in second-hand markets.

Thousands of scattered bank notes -- wages being flown in for police officers -- also attracted looters.

TANS says it will pay about $100,000 compensation per victim.

The accident has highlighted poor infrastructure in the sector. Though Peru attracts millions of tourists a year, many of its airports are little more than airstrips and only the international airport in Lima has radar.

TANS, founded in the 1960s by the air force to help serve remote jungle communities, became a commercial airline in 1998 but is deeply in debt. The crashed plane was built in 1983.

Peru has said it has had preliminary contacts about selling a stake in the airline to Air China, but a source at the Chinese airline stressed the talks were only informal and unlikely to lead to any deal as TANS is too small.

Source: REUTERS

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