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March 29, 2021 04:01 pm

His Plane Crashed in the Amazon. Then Came the Hard Part.

An anonymous reader shares a report: The pilot was 3,000 feet over the Amazon, flying a small propeller plane on his maiden assignment for wildcat miners deep in the forest, when the lone engine cut out. He took a deep breath and scanned the vast emerald green canopy below. He had about five minutes, he calculated, to bring down the plane and its highly flammable cargo: 160 gallons of diesel fuel. He reported his imminent crash over a portable radio to whoever might be listening, noting that he was about halfway to his destination, a mine known as California. Then, as his plane barreled down, Antonio Sena aimed for a small valley lined with palm trees. "There!" he recalls thinking. "Palm trees mean there is water, perhaps a river." Since becoming a pilot nine years earlier, Mr. Sena had heard countless stories about fatal crashes. But while his plane scraped a few trees and then smashed into the ground, Mr. Sena realized something exhilarating as he rolled to a halt: He had survived. He grabbed a pocketknife, a flashlight, a couple of lighters and a phone with little juice in the battery and scrambled away from the aircraft. Moments later, it burst into flames. Then he settled down to wait for his rescue. It was a long wait. At first, Mr. Sena recounted in a phone interview last week, he camped out next to the remains of the 48-year-old Cessna 210L, figuring it was his best chance of being spotted. And search pilots did, in fact, circle the area for several days -- and then kept going. "They flew right over, but couldn't see me," Mr. Sena said. He waved and screamed each time he heard the thud of propellers, but to no avail. Giving up his hopes of being rescued near the wreckage, Mr. Sena embarked on what turned out to be a 17-mile trek through the rainforest, home to jaguars, venomous insects and anacondas. Thirty-six days later, on March 6, he emerged to tell a story that has transfixed Brazilians -- a rare piece of uplifting news for a nation badly in need of it after a year of being battered by the Covid-19 crisis. His account, though, also put a spotlight on Brazil's illegal mining industry, which has flourished in recent decades in Indigenous territories and other parts of the Amazon that are supposed to be sanctuaries. The illegal mine where he was headed is in the Maicuru reserve, where no human activities are allowed beyond those meant to protect the forest.

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