A 36-year-old plane crash survivor survived ten days on the snowy plains of Siberia despite suffering serious injuries. Miner Pavel Krivoshapkin, 36, suffered a concussion and broken ribs and lived off packets of instant noodles from a small abandoned hut frequented by reindeer herders.
Krivoshapkin was the only survivor of the crash involving a single-engine Antonov An-2 aircraft, when the plane crashed into a hillside, burning the pilot and co-pilot alive. He was the third passenger in the plane and the only passenger to survive the impact.
The man, who worked as a silver miner in Vertikalni, was found alive on Friday in Russia’s vast Yakutia region, which is infested with brown bears and wolves.
After recovering in hospital, Krivoshapkin recounted his difficult adventure, which began when the plane he was on got lost in fog. The moment of impact came a few minutes later when Antonov hit a mountain slope.
“When I regained consciousness, everything around me was full of smoke,” he told international news channel Russia 24. “To get off the plane, I broke the lock on the door.”
Krivoshapkin says that when he was finally able to get out, several pieces of the plane were scattered on the slope and still on fire. “I sat on the side of the plane for about three hours and then slowly walked to a river where I built a small fire,” he said.
The miner believes he escaped the disaster because he was sitting in the back of the plane. He says he was on a mission to bring a ton of food and equipment to a silver mine.
Worried about the chill that the harsh arctic night was imposing and trying to warm himself, he saw a cabin nearby. He managed to enter the room by following a path opened by a reindeer breeder.
In the hut, Krivoshapkin found several packages of doshirak noodles (a South Korean brand of instant noodles). It was this food that kept him alive for the next ten days until a rescue team arrived.
“They [os pacotes de macarrão] Saved me from severe hunger – although I did not want to eat so much, because my body was so sore and sore. I was hungry, but I wasn’t hungry.
While he was waiting for help, he heard several helicopters and created an improvised flag that could be seen from above. However, his efforts seemed in vain.
“I forced myself to get up once a day and every day I went to wave a flag in the hope that someone would see me,” the miner said.
He didn’t know it, but a massive search was underway for survivors of the 11.2 square kilometer plane crash. However, Krivoshapkin was discovered only on the tenth day.
A rescue team aboard a Polar Airlines Mi-8 helicopter found the plane’s wreckage and the charred bodies of the two pilots early Friday in Yakutia’s Kobyasky district. An hour later, they found Krivoshapkin and took him to a hospital in the city of Yakutsk, where he recovered from his injuries.
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