Russian girl falls from a height of over 5km

Although airplanes are generally very safe modes of transportation, victims of plane crashes often cannot escape death. However, there are still miraculous cases of survival around the world . The following story is one such example.

Forty years ago, the peaceful skies near the town of Zavitinsk (800 km northwest of Vladivostok) were shattered by a plane crash. It occurred on August 24, 1981, in the Far East of the Soviet Union, now Russia.

A Tragic Honeymoon

On that day, a Tu-16K missile-carrying aircraft collided with an An-24RV passenger plane, which was traveling from Komsomolsk-on-Amur to Blagoveshchensk. At the time, the military aircraft was only conducting weather and meteorological information gathering operations.

The collision was the result of a series of unfortunate factors. These factors, considered individually, would be unremarkable, but combined they created a very dangerous situation.

The Tu-16K was one of several military aircraft that had to fly over the area that day. The pilots were given incorrect information about other aircraft they should be wary of in the sky.

Tu-16K bomber

That's why they told air traffic control that they had reached the necessary altitude (so that air traffic control could safely direct other aircraft), but in reality, the pilots had intended for the Tu-16K to reach that altitude a little later. Military flight commanders weren't using radio transponders at the time – otherwise, they would have located the An-24RV. Furthermore, the civilian and military forces were not in sync on the flight plan that day.

An-24RV aircraft

At 3:21 p.m., the two planes collided at an altitude of 5,200 meters. The An-24RV lost its upper fuselage and wings, its rotor blades cutting into the fuselage of the Tu-16K. Both planes broke apart and crashed into the taiga forest. 37 people died, including six members of the military crew, five members of the An-24RV's crew, and 26 passengers (including a child). However, the total number of people on board was 38: Larisa Savitskaya, a 20-year-old education student, miraculously survived the accident.

Computer reconstructs images of the accident.

Larisa Savitskaya was returning from her honeymoon with her husband, Vladimir. They had visited Vladimir's relatives in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Blagoveshchensk is the city where the couple lived and studied. Larisa remembered all the passengers and the time they boarded the plane, but later recounted, "I was so tired I don't remember how we took off."

The plane had only half its seats available, and a flight attendant offered the two passengers seats in the front, but they decided to go to the back to avoid the noise. This was one of the decisions that saved Larisa's life: "When the plane broke apart, the seats we were initially sitting in came loose and flew away along with some pieces of the plane and some passengers."

She awoke from the violent crash. The cabin temperature, which had been 25°C, suddenly plummeted to -30°C as the upper part of the plane was torn apart. Larisa felt a burning sensation. She heard crying and felt the air hissing around her. Vladimir died instantly at the moment of impact, and Larisa felt as if her own life had ended, unable even to scream in grief or pain.

Larisa Savitskaya

At one point, she collapsed on the airplane aisle. Then, she suddenly remembered an Italian film titled 'Miracles Still Happen' that she had seen in theaters with Vladimir about a year earlier. The film was about Julianne Koepcke, a survivor of a plane crash in the Peruvian jungle. Larisa recalled, “Just one thought – how to die without pain. I grabbed the armrest, trying to push my other hand and leg off the floor and seat with all my remaining strength.” Julianne had done the same thing in the film.

Taiga forest

Fortunately, the tail section of the An-24RV with Larisa's seat was gliding through the air and didn't spin abruptly. She recounted that she couldn't see everything that was happening. “Clouds drifted along the windows, then thick fog enveloped them and the wind howled deafeningly. The plane didn't catch fire. Suddenly, trees everywhere surrounded the wreckage. A taiga forest! Larisa was lucky again: After eight minutes of freefall, the wreckage she was carrying got caught in a clump of flexible birch trees, making the landing much gentler than falling straight to the ground or onto fir trees.”

The first sound Larisa heard upon waking was the buzzing of forest mosquitoes surrounding her. However, she couldn't yet fully assess the severity of her injuries. She felt multiple injuries to her spine (fortunately, she could still move), broken teeth, ribs, arms and legs, a concussion, and a dull ache all over her body. Larisa experienced various hallucinations: “I opened my eyes: the sky above, I was sitting in an armchair, and Volodya was in front of me. He was sitting on the floor of the intact right compartment, leaning against the wall. He seemed to be looking at me. But his eyes were closed.”

It was as if he were saying goodbye. I think if he had one wish before he died, he probably just wanted me to survive.”

Despite her injuries, Larisa was still able to walk. That evening, it started to rain, and she found a piece of the aircraft fuselage to take shelter in. She felt very cold and had to use a seat cover to keep warm. The first night, she heard growling somewhere in the forest. It could have been a bear, but Larisa was too shocked to think about that. For two days, she drank water from nearby puddles. Because she had lost almost all her teeth, she couldn't even eat berries. Larisa recalled, “I heard the helicopter and tried to signal to the people on board. I found a red seat cover and started waving. They saw me with that cover and thought I was the geologists’ cook putting on a show. The geologists’ camp was somewhere nearby.” By the third day, she remembered that Vladimir had matches and cigarettes in his jacket pocket.

The search team found Larisa sitting on a bench, smoking. “When the rescuers found me, they couldn’t say anything other than ‘oh,’. I understood them; three days of frantic searching, recovering human remains from trees, and then suddenly seeing a living person,” she recalled. No one believed anyone could survive such an accident (this is actually why Larisa was found so late).

“I looked like nobody in the world. My whole body was a deep plum color with a shimmering silver sheen – the aircraft paint had adhered unusually well. And my hair had turned into a large piece of fiberglass because of the wind.”

After the rescue team arrived, Larisa was unable to walk. She explained, "When I saw everyone, I was completely exhausted." The rescue team had to cut down birch trees to allow a helicopter to land and transport the sole survivor to Zavitinsk. "Then, in Zavitinsk, I discovered that a grave had been dug for me. They had prepared it based on the passenger log of the An-24RV."

Larisa's treatment was difficult, but overall, her body recovered from the horrific injuries. She applied for disability certification, but a committee decided that the injuries were not serious enough. Larisa received only a very small compensation – just 75 rubles (about $117 at the 1980 exchange rate), while the average monthly salary in the Soviet Union was around 178 rubles (about $278). Larisa Savitskaya holds the Guinness World Record for receiving the smallest compensation ever after a plane crash.

Larisa and her son, 1990

Larisa in 2021

Meanwhile, the plane crash was immediately covered up. Soviet newspapers wrote nothing about the disaster. Regarding the official investigation results, authorities declared the pilot and air traffic controller responsible for the crash. Larisa Savitskaya only received notification of the investigation results in the 1990s. The first report only appeared in 1985 in the newspaper 'Sovetsky Sport' (“Soviet Sport ”). Larisa Savitskaya recalled: “It seemed they really wanted to write about the accident, but were forbidden. So they wrote that I was flying in a homemade plane and fell from an altitude of 5 km, but survived, because a Soviet person can overcome anything.”

Later, Larisa moved from Blagoveshchensk to Moscow. It was difficult for her to live in a city where everything was connected to Vladimir.

Forty years after the accident, Larisa admits that she still remembers everything and the memories still cause her pain. At the same time, she believes that "a rocket never falls twice in the same place," so she is not afraid to fly.

Nguyen Xuan Thuy (Source: RBTH)

Beneficial
Emotion
Creative
Unique

Source: https://vtc.vn/song-sot-ky-dieu-co-gai-nga-roi-tu-do-cao-hon-5km-ar736184.html