Brooklyn family survives crash of Peruvian flight

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From the Associated Press:

Brooklyn family survives crash of Peruvian flight

NEW YORK (AP) -- Six members of a Brooklyn family were among those who escaped from a flaming Peruvian airliner after it crash-landed in the Amazon jungle.

Jose Leandro Vivas, 43, survived the crash along with his three daughters, his brother and his sister-in-law.

"We jumped out the plane and unfortunately we were thigh deep in the marsh water. It was just mud," Vivas, a Peruvian-American, said Wednesday. "We had to practically crawl out of there and try to get to some high ground."

In an interview with The Associated Press in a restaurant alongside the Ucayali River, where the family was celebrating its good fortune, his brother, Gabriel Vivas, said that he and another man saw a baby boy behind the plane when they got out.


"He picked up the baby, and we tried to get to higher ground," he said. "He got stuck in the mud, and then I grabbed the baby. Then he jumped in front of me to push away the thorns that were in our way. Between us, we got the baby to higher ground with everybody else."

Gabriel Vivas said he did not know if the baby's parents had survived the crash but was told the baby had been taken to Lima and was alive.

The Vivas family had been traveling to Peru to visit relatives and celebrate one of the daughters' 15th birthday, relatives in Brooklyn said Wednesday.

Jose and Gabriel Vivas' mother, Sylvia Vivas, said she had gone to bed before news of the crash was reported and heard about what happened from her daughter Wednesday morning.

"Everybody's OK," she said by telephone from her Brooklyn home on Wednesday night.

Her daughter, Sandra Vivas, said she spoke to her brothers after they were released from a hospital.

"I was just thankful, you know," she said. "I knew that it was a miracle that they made it, and now I'm just looking forward to them making it home."

Thirty-one of the 98 people aboard were killed when TANS Peru Flight 204 crash-landed on a flight from the Peruvian capital of Lima to the Amazon city of Pucallpa. Ten people were missing.