Outside was a landscape from hell ... flames licked from the plane, and thick, acrid smoke poured into the air.
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Courtesy Richard Glenn
Monica and William on their wedding day. They loved the wilderness, and planned to honeymoon in the jungle.
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Mariano Bazo/Reuters/Corbis
A close clan, the Vivases traveled from Brooklyn to their family's home in Pucallpa, Peru, for a special 15th birthday celebration. José and Gabriel (front), Jharline, Jacqueline and Diana (back).
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Yomona/AFP/Getty Images
Rescuers fought to get closer to the burning wreckage of TANS flight 204. The Boeing 737 crashed lass than five miles from the airport, killing 40 of the 98 people aboard.
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Government Palace/AP Images
After the disaster, a government plane flew Monica and William out of Pucallpa. William sacrificed his hand to protect his bride.
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Mariano Bazo/Reuters/Corbis
A close clan, the Vivases traveled from Brooklyn to their family's home in Pucallpa, Peru, for a special 15th birthday celebration. José and Gabriel (front), Jharline, Jacqueline and Diana (back).
Landscape From Hell
Outside was a landscape from hell. The plane had cut a quarter-mile swath through the jungle, scattering human bodies, luggage, seats and pieces of fuselage among the broken trees. A woman's body lay partway under the wreckage, long black hair streamed behind her. The body of a flight attendant was tossed amid the debris. Stunned survivors floundered in the mud, while flames licked from the plane, and thick, acrid smoke poured into the air.
Escaping the metal-melting temperatures of the plane, the survivors were startled to find bitter-cold weather. This was not the steaming jungle of the Amazon basin. This was the high rain forest of Peru in the midst of a bone-chilling thunderstorm. Temperatures hovered around freezing, and a driving rain alternated with hailstones as big as marbles.
Paola struggled to stand in the waist-high mud. The plane, she knew, could blow up any second. "Get away from the plane!" she screamed.
"Get away!"
Many of the survivors had skin blistered from severe burns, and were bleeding from open wounds. Some had lost their shoes in the sucking muck. Thorns tore at their feet and legs as they stumbled toward higher ground. Paola tried to walk, but collapsed. The jump from the plane had torn ligaments in her right ankle. She couldn't walk or free herself from the mud and begged for help. A man, struggling himself, hooked her under the arm and pulled her forward.
A few yards away, Monica was floundering too. Shivering in a T-shirt, light pants and sandals, with her face burned in patches, she was too dazed to be scared. Is this real or a dream? she wondered.
Next to her, William held his burned hands out in front of him, trying to keep his balance. In using them to shield his wife's face, he'd burned them badly. They were blistered, oozing, the skin shearing off.
A few yards away, he spotted something. Perched alone atop a piece of wreckage near the burning plane was a dark-haired child of eight or nine. "Mama!" she cried hysterically. "Mama!" William's heart wrenched. What could he do? As a veteran paramedic with dozens of rescues to his credit, he knew what to do -- but with burned hands he couldn't pick her up.
"I'll go," said Monica.
William didn't want her to go. He looked around frantically for help. Another man, a 30-something Peruvian in a maroon shirt, appeared behind them. "Please, will you go help that girl?" William begged. The man waded over, and the child wrapped her arms around his neck.
William and Monica scanned the landscape looking for other stranded survivors. "Is there anyone who needs help?" they yelled. They heard no one.
But Gabriel Vivas did. "What's that?" he asked. He and the rest of his family had made it out and were in the swamp near Monica and William.
Gabriel heard a small wail coming from somewhere behind him, closer to the blaze. To a father of five, the sound was unmistakable. It was a child. Turning, he saw a baby lying in the mud some distance away.
"Where are you going?" demanded Diana.
"I'm going back to get that child," Gabriel said. "Keep walking."
Diana was terrified that her husband would be killed when the plane exploded and pleaded with him not to go. "I'll be okay," Gabriel said as he slogged back toward the fiery wreck. He was frightened. There was carnage like he'd never imagined. Charred and bloody body parts littered the crash site. If it weren't for the child, he would have turned and fled.
In the midst of this desolation, Gabriel found a little boy about a year old. He was barely breathing. His face was cut and bleeding, his body covered with burns. Another passenger had also come to the baby's aid. They would have to act quickly.
With Gabriel at his elbow, the man scooped up the baby, took a few steps and sank waist-high in a swamp hole. "Let me take him," Gabriel said, gesturing with his hand. He grasped the baby with one arm and used the other to pull the man free. Carrying the child, Gabriel climbed a hill while the other man cleared a path through the thorny brush.
As he plowed through the muck, Gabriel kept watching the child, thinking, This baby is going to die in my arms! Please God, don't let him die.
Diana Vivas, frantic with worry, was also praying. She and the rest of the Vivas family had stopped to rest in a jungle clearing about 50 yards from the blazing aircraft. The girls had lost their shoes in the mud and were crying, "Why did the plane crash? When can we go home?" Diana was shouting into the darkness too. "Gabby, Gabby!" she called to guide him back.
Paola Chu was in pain, her right foot twice its normal size, her left leg bloody. One eye was swollen shut, and her face was a mass of bruises. Immediately after the crash, an adrenaline rush had pushed her into action. Now, catching her breath as she rested on the wet ground, a wave of emotion crashed over her. What about her friends on the flight crew? "Where is the rest of the crew?" she asked another flight attendant. They are gone, her friend replied. Paola felt tears coming. Had she served in the front cabin as she'd expected, she'd be dead too. Right now, she had to hold herself together. She still had a job to do.
Just then, there was a movement in the brush. A figure, covered with mud, pushed through the bushes. Gabriel, his face white with strain, staggered forward with a baby in his arms. He laid the child down carefully and asked his brother, José, to tell everyone in Spanish to make a protective circle to shield the baby from hailstones. A second explosion ripped through the air. Flames flared over the treetops, and the rest of the plane was engulfed.
It was too dangerous to stay where they were. Paola decided to get everyone moving to higher ground and to find help. Two men lifted her to her feet, and she urged the passengers to stay together and move farther away from the plane. "Keep walking," she said. "Stay calm."
Frightened, wet and shaking from the cold, the group plodded on. Gabriel took his sneakers off and put them on his wife's feet. He walked on in his socks, cradling the baby as he went. A man carried Paola. It was still raining, and thunder rumbled in the distance.
Shortly after 4 p.m., the survivors saw two men from a local village approach across an open field. A few minutes later, they spotted the lights of cars. One by one, injured passengers began boarding vehicles bound for hospitals. Then Gabriel and José saw an unbelievable sight -- their father, the person they'd come all these miles to see -- had found them. The 67-year-old senior Vivas had been waiting at the Pucallpa airport when he heard about the crash. He rushed to the scene. Now father and sons clung together, swaying from side to side and crying.
The final toll for Flight 204 was 40 passengers and crew dead, 58 survivors. An investigation by the Peruvian government attributed the cause of the crash to human error, the pilot having attempted to land in a sudden, violent storm.
In Peru, more than half of rural people live on less than $1 a day, and following the disaster, peasants in the area stripped the plane clean of valuables. In no time, the jungle vegetation began to close over the debris.
The victims' scars, physical and emotional, were slow to heal. Paola Chu remained in a Lima hospital for 40 days with internal hemorrhaging, edema on the brain and torn ligaments in her right foot. The baby, Juan Carlos Valle, was treated for burns and a fractured skull. His mother died from injuries, but his father, who was not on the flight, came to take him home.
Monica and William spent their "honeymoon" undergoing burn treatment in a Lima hospital. Although Monica recovered quickly from her injuries, William's severely burned hands took time. Months later, he was still wearing protective gloves.
As for the Vivas family, they escaped serious injuries. Back in New York, the Brooklyn borough president proclaimed "Vivas Family Day," citing the family for "great bravery and fortitude in the face of grave danger."
Memories of the horror linger. Loud subway trains now make Gabriel shiver. José hates crowds and going too fast in a car. Diana still has nightmares, and Paola has struggled with depression.
The plane crash made Monica look at her husband and her marriage vows in a new light. "It's pretty easy to be with someone in the good times," she says. But the notion of sticking together "for better or worse" became very real for her. "The crash put everything to the test," she says. "I made the right choice."
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