How a young Dutch woman survived a plane crash in Vietnam • Russia today Posting in CHAT: Russia On November 14, 1992, a plane crashed near the Son Trung community in Vietnam, killing all passengers and crew except a young Dutch woman, Annette Herfex. She had to survive in the jungle for more than a week without food and with open fractures. Struggling with cannibalism and hallucinations, she waited for rescuers. And all thanks to a rational approach. Escape from claustrophobia. How Annette Survived a Plane Crash While studying at Leiden University in the Netherlands, Annette Herfkens met a guy named Willem van der Pas. After thirteen years of relationship, they got married, but Passier (that was the girl’s name) went to Vietnam on banking business and invited her to join him. After spending a great weekend in Ho Chi Minh City, the couple gathered on the coast of Vietnam to relax by the sea. But as soon as the girl saw the plane on which they were supposed to fly to the beach, she was horrified. It was a small and quite old (by the time of the disaster it was already sixteen years old) Yak-40. Feeling claustrophobic, she invited Passier to go by car, but he refused, explaining the difficulty of traveling through the jungle. In addition, as Kalina Fraga writes in the article “How plane survivor Annette Herfkens survived 192 hours alone in the Vietnamese jungle,” the guy deceived Annette by saying that the flight lasted only twenty minutes, although the flight was supposed to take about an hour. The rest of the unfortunate people (24 passengers and 6 crew members) boarded the dilapidated plane, the girl again had an attack of claustrophobia and after takeoff she unfastened her seat belt. Perhaps this is what saved her life. After 50 minutes of flight, the plane crashed into an air pocket, and Passier became very tense, but Annette joked, saying: “Well, of course, that’s how nasty toy planes fall! It’s just an air hole, don’t worry.” And to calm the guy down, she took his hand. But it was not in vain that Passier was worried. Annette and Passier A few moments later the plane crashed, someone screamed: and Annette’s eyes darkened. As it became known later, the Yak-40 flew too low and, catching on trees, crashed into a mountain. As the girl recalled much later: “I don’t remember exactly what happened, but I think I was spinning around the plane like a lone piece of clothing in a dryer, hitting my head and limbs on the ceiling and cabinets. I may have been the only one not wearing a seat belt. At some point I must have landed, stuck my legs forward under the seat and got stuck. This kept me in place until the second, stronger impact, which caused the plane to fall apart.” So claustrophobia saved Annette from instant death, because by unfastening her seat belt, she avoided the fate of Passier and many passengers. Lauren McMah, in The article "The Sole Survivor of Vietnam Airlines Flight 474 and Her 192 Hours of Solitude in the Jungle" quotes one girl on the matter: "Everyone else on that plane was injured, mostly because they were wearing seat belts, because - why their ribs got into their lungs.” Annette's Yak-40 awakening five hours later was terrifying, finding herself stuck and a chair with a dead man falling on her. Not far from her she found Passir. “He was lying on his chair, which somehow leaned back, and a smile played on his lips. Such a sweet smile. But he was dead, his ribs, compressed by the seat belt, cutting into his lungs,” she later recalled. So on November 14, 1992, Annette was left alone in the middle of the jungle without a groom. Debris at the crash site. The girl was in such shock from what happened that the memory of how she got off the plane disappeared from her memory. She woke up outside, on the side of a hill, under the trees, in the thick undergrowth. Annette later suffered 12 fractures and damage to her jaw and lung. As a survivor said: “Everything hurt and I couldn’t move. My skirt was ripped off and I could see four inches of bluish bone sticking out through the layers of flesh on my shin.” Next to Annette was another survivor, a Vietnamese businessman who, despite his terrible injuries, tried to calm her down, saying that he was a very important person and they would definitely look for him. in his underwear, in front of the man, he opened the suitcase and tore his pants. Despite the terrible pain in her leg, Annette pulled up her pants. A few hours later the man died, and Annette was left completely alone. while she was still listening to the screams of the wounded who got out of the plane, but they soon stopped. Eight days between life and death Thus began the story of the survival of a lonely girl in the jungle. To begin with, Annette tried to start a fire using a lighter, which she always carried with her, since she was a heavy smoker. But, unfortunately, everything around was so wet that the fire never started. Annette visited the scene of the disaster much later. Annette used all the power of her mind in order not to go crazy from the horror of what happened. In an interview that she later said WOCA The Source Radio, she said she intentionally turned her attention from the corpses to the beauty of the jungle. She consciously forbade herself to think about her deceased fiancé, realizing that if she started crying, she would not be able to stop and would lose her last strength. Then she drove away all the fears that the same mind whispered, coming to terms with the fact. . that instead of rescuers a tiger or a snake might find her. She herself decided that she would wait for help on the spot for seven days, and then go in search of food. She later admitted that she was physically incapable of such a journey, but she needed hope. More or less in order with her thoughts, Annette created a survival plan, dividing large tasks into small and manageable ones. She initially wondered how to get water and noticed a piece of an airplane wing with spongy material sticking out. Annette was unable to get up and, feeling terrible pain, moved to the wing on her elbows, dragging her useless legs behind her. She later had to have skin grafted on her elbows because she was exposing them so thinly. Once she reached her destination, she began using the sponge to collect rainwater. Every two hours, she squeezed a few drops of a sponge into her mouth, thus saving herself from dehydration. To stay dry, the girl used a raincoat she found in someone's backpack. Having solved the water problem, Annette started thinking about food. And then thoughts of cannibalism began to creep into her. As Annette recalls, she looked at the Vietnamese man who shared his pants with her and thought that under no circumstances would she eat him. Even the disgusting smell of corpses helped to abandon this. Thus, one after another, eight days of existence between life and death passed. The girl ate exclusively water (later it turned out that during this time she had lost ten kilograms), fell asleep and woke up, watching the time on the dead merchant’s watch. Immediately after the rescue, on the eighth day. A miracle happened. Paddington Bear and the Dead Rescuers On the seventh day, Annette felt like she was hallucinating. Hearing the cracking of wood, she saw a man in an orange cape and hood. At first, the girl decided that it was St. Peter who had personally come for her, then that it was Paddington Bear. However, she screamed and waved her hand, and after a few moments the man disappeared. Annette believed for quite a long time that it was a vision. Only later did she return to Vietnam and learn that her savior was a local policeman named Cao Nan Hanh. The man initially thought he was seeing a ghost because he had never seen a white woman before. However, he reported the disaster to the authorities, and rescuers arrived the next day. Annette with her daughter and Khao Nan Khanh Much later, Annette learns that an Mi-8 helicopter was sent to search for her, which also crashed and all seven on board died. When six rescuers carried her from the mountain, Annette experienced the shock of how she was taken away from the body of her loved one men. But those who helped her were not only able to somehow calm her down, but also took off their shoes so that the injured woman would not tremble so much when moving. She was airlifted to Ho Chi Minh City and then to Singapore, where she underwent multiple surgeries, including a kidney removal, skin grafts on her elbows, jaw surgery and treatment for gangrene. It cannot be said that Annette has fully recovered. She has poor foot control and even jokes that she will no longer be able to do kickboxing. Friends repeatedly noticed that her face had changed and was somewhat deformed. Annette in the…
