Air crash survivor cheats death again
One of the few survivors of a plane crash in Colombia five years ago has again escaped death, after crawling from the wreckage of a bus that rolled down a hillside in Bolivia, killing 21 people on board.
Erwin Tumiri, 30, was travelling along amotorway on the way to work at Santa Cruz airport when the bus he was on careered down a hillside in the early hours of Tuesday.
Tumiri, an aircraft technician, said that moments before the impact he felt the vehicle swerve and heard people screaming. He said that he braced himself as it tumbled into a ravine.
‘‘The only thing I could do was grab the seat in front of me and lean on the window so that I didn’t move when the bus rolled over, because I knew that was going to happen’’, he told the Bolivian TV network Unitel.
‘‘We turned and turned and there were people who didn’t hold on and were thrown about as if it were a washing machine,’’ he said.
The bus came to a halt upside down in a gully covered in dense vegetation.
As he emerged from the wreckage he fell to his knees and said to himself: ‘‘Again. The same thing is happening to me again.’’
He was rescued by people who lived near by and taken to hospital, but was discharged the next
‘‘The only thing I could do was grab the seat in front of me and lean on the window so that I didn’t move when the bus rolled over, because I knew that was going to happen.’’
Erwin Tumiri
day after treatment for minor arm and leg injuries. He was one of about 30 survivors who were treated in hospital.
In 2016 Tumiri was one of only six survivors when Lamia Flight 2933 from Santa Cruz crashed near the Colombian city of Medellin after it ran out of fuel .
On board was the entire squad of the Brazilian football club Chapecoense, which had been scheduled to play at the regional semifinals of the Copa Sudamericana championship.
A total of 71 people died, including almost all the football players. Tumiri, who was travelling as a member of the crew on the BAE-146 jet, later said that he had felt a vibration from one of the engines, which turned out to be it failing because of a lack of fuel.
A colleague signalled to him to fasten his seatbelt more securely, and he surrounded himself with bags and braced himself. Moments afterwards the plane hit a mountain ridge at 2600m in fog and partially broke up before coming to rest on a steep wooded slope.
When rescue teams arrived two hours later he was found semi-conscious calling out the names of fellow crew members on the flight, all but one of whom were dead.
Initial reports suggest that the coach crash in Bolivia was the result of brake failure. Tumiri said that he was mourning all those who had died but felt that he had a new life.
He said that his priority now would be to spend more time with his elderly mother.