Taxis light up remote airstrip in Peru for medevac flight

Google – AFP, 4 April 2013

Mototaxis drive along a street of Iquitos, in the northern jungle of Peru,

on January 15, 2009 (AFP/File, Ernesto Benavides)

LIMA — Their lights blaring in the night, hundreds of taxis lined an unlit airstrip in a jungle region of Peru so an emergency medevac plane with three very sick patients could take off.

All three survived after the 300-odd drivers of motorcycles fashioned into small taxis with compartments for passengers heeded a call Wednesday night from a radio station to race to the 800-meter airstrip in Contamana, in one of Peru's poorest regions, Peruvian media reported Thursday.

The airstrip is not equipped for nocturnal flights because it has no lights.

The patients were a woman and her newborn, both with serious problems after delivery, and a man with a tropical disease.

"We have always been people with a heart," said Adolfo Lobo, the radio presenter who put out the call for help.

Contamana, a town of 26,000, has a hospital with no equipment for emergency situations and the airport is rudimentary.