A 12-year-old girl was reunited with her mother yesterday after being found
alive on the jungle-covered slopes of a volcano in Panama – the sole
survivor of an aircraft crash that killed the internet multi-millionaire
Michael Klein.
After a 52-hour search, Francesca Lewis was found in the wreckage of the
Cessna 172 aircraft that went down on Sunday on the remote Baru volcano, 270
miles (435km) west of the capital, Panama City.
Rescuers carried her on a three-and-a-half-hour trek down the mountain before
she was airlifted by helicopter to a hospital in the city of David, where
her mother was waiting. Valerie Lewis said that her daughter could walk, but
had apparently suffered a broken arm and hypothermia. “My husband spoke to
her by phone this morning,” Mrs Lewis said. “She sounded good. She just
said, ‘Hi, Daddy. See you soon’.”
Mrs Lewis said that Francesca was disoriented when rescuers spotted her under
a wing of the wrecked plane. She thought she was at home and wondered why
the wing was in her house, said Mrs Lewis, who added that her daughter
appeared to have been thrown from the plane on impact and described her
survival as “miraculous”. “She’s doing all right,” she told the Cable News
Network (CNN). “She is having tests done at the hospital right now, and so
far things seem good – kind of miraculous. We’re so relieved to have
her with us.”
On arrival at hospital, Francesca wore a neck brace and had one arm bandaged.
“She apparently has some fractures, but she is stable and talking,” Manuel
de la Cruz, a doctor at the hospital, said. Francesca had left her home in
Santa Barbara, California, last Thursday with Mr Klein and his 13-year-old
daughter, Talia, for a Christmas break at the internet entrepreneur’s
eco-resort on Panama’s Islas Secas.
Mr Klein, 37, was killed in the crash along with his daughter and their
Panamanian pilot, Edwin Lasso.
Friends described Mr Klein as a brilliant polymath. Kurt Benjamin, a
colleague, told KNBC-TV in Los Angeles that he was “one of the most
interesting people you could ever speak to on any . . . in myriad subjects.
He’s just an unbelievable individual.” He said that Mr Klein was close to
his daughter. “Her father was so proud of her,” he said. “She was an
amazing, accomplished horseback rider – just an absolute winner. Solid,
solid young girl.”
After skipping high school, Mr Klein graduated from the University of
California at the age of 17 and founded two software firms – Mibek Corp
and Transoft Networks Inc – that were bought out. He then became
president and chief executive officer of eGroups Inc, the world’s largest
group e-mail communication service, which was sold to Yahoo! Inc for $450
million (£225 million) in 2000.
That year Mr Klein bought the 1,100-acre San Roque Ranch in Santa Barbara
County, granting a so-called conservation easement that protected 880 acres
(356ha) of the property from development. He also gave $100,000 to the Land
Trust for Santa Barbara County, which arranged the sale and protection of
that land and several related parcels.
In 2002 he acquired a Santa Barbara-based company called Pacifi-cor LLC that
manages hedge funds.
Mr Klein apparently planned to take aerial photographs or a video of the Baru
volcano during a 45-minute flight with his daughter and Francesca, her
friend, on Sunday. Their light aircraft lost communication with the control
tower shortly before noon local time as it flew from the Islas Secas to the
Alvaro Berroa airstrip near the city of Volcan.
The local RPC radio station reported that witnesses saw it flying at a very
low altitude at about noon Sunday in buffeting winds.
Within hours, rescue workers and volunteers had begun scouring the dense,
mountainous terrain for signs of the Cessna and its passengers.
Kim Klein, Mr Klein’s former wife and Talia’s mother, arrived in Panama on
Monday and offered a reward of $25,000 to anyone who located the aircraft.
The search was interrupted repeatedly by fog and heavy rain, which meant
that search helicopters could not fly. Justin Campbell, Talia’s uncle, said
he had heard that hikers had finally spotted the aircraft.
A team of 17 rescue workers, including a paramedic, made their way with food
and medicine to the crash site at an altitude of 3,500ft (1,065m). They
found the bodies of Mr Klein and his daughter and their pilot at about
4:30pm local time on Tuesday on the southern slope of the volcano. The
mountain is in the Chiriqui province, which has been swept by storms, fog
and freezing temperatures since Friday, causing heavy flooding. The rescuers
cared for Francesca in a makeshift shelter before carrying her to safety
through knee-high mud.
Roberto Velasquez, head of the government civil protection agency, said: “It’s
a miracle the girl survived because the aircraft was smashed to pieces.”
Against the odds
— In 2005 a Tunisian passenger aircraft was forced to make an emergency
landing off the coast of Sicily. Of 39 passengers, 23 survived by treading
water or clinging to floating fragments of the wreckage
— In 1995, on her 21st birthday, Mercedes Ramirez boarded a flight from
Miami to Cali. The aircraft crashed in the Andes, killing 160 passengers,
among them her parents. She was one of only four survivors
— In 1972 the Chilean Air Force found 14 survivors from an aircraft that
had crashed in the Argentinian Andes two months previously. The group later
confirmed that they had survived by eating human flesh
— In 1971 an aircraft crashed after being struck by lightning over Peru,
killing all but one of its passengers. Juliane Koepcke, 17, wandered through
the jungle for 11 days before her rescue
— In 1972 Vesna Vulovic, 22, a flight attendant, fell 33,000ft on to a
snowy mountain after her aircraft was destroyed by a suspected terrorist
bomb over Czechoslovakia. She survived, and claims to have no fear of flying
Source: Times archives
