Hundreds of people swarmed knee-deep in mud over the chaotic wreck of a Peruvian plane on Thursday -- some hunting for the black box, some for three missing victims and others just trying to grab thousands of bank notes strewn about or other curios, witnesses said.
Police said torrential rain had halted the official search for three people, among them an Australian woman, still unaccounted for after a TANS Boeing 737-200 crashed in a freak hailstorm in Peru's northern jungle on Tuesday, killing 40.
The plane was reduced to chunks of charred rubble, yet more than half the 98 passengers and crew miraculously survived. Officials said it was too early to say why it crashed, but suggested poor weather or pilot error may have been to blame.
Locals were seen walking down the street in Pucallpa, the poor town where the plane crashed as it came in to land, carrying seats or metal rods. Thousands of bank notes -- pay being flown in for police wages -- littered the site.
One boy said the cardboard box he was carrying contained a human brain that had been scooped out of the snake-infested swamp by rescue workers.
More than 100 police, air force and army officers were trying to keep order as heavy rain and lightning worsened the chaos in the steamy jungle town.
Distraught relatives said the morgue was overwhelmed.
"There are dead people thrown on the floor, people with no arms," one woman who identified herself only as Ana Lucia told RPP radio.
She said her father's body had been stripped of its wedding ring and an American victim's digital camera had been stolen, leaving just its case. Two Americans, a Spanish woman and a Colombian woman were among the dead. The pilot also died.
About 15 walking wounded waiting to be flown to Lima complained they had no water or cream for their severe burns.
Some 20 coffins, draped in white cloth, were lined up near the runway ready to be flown to Lima when the storm subsided.
Several locals said they were spurred on by a police promise of a reward for whoever finds one of the plane's two black boxes. Police could not confirm a reward was on offer.
One flight recorder has already been found.
Lucky survivors including a 9 year old girl who rescued her baby cousin, and a man who saw his skin shrivel and drop off as a fireball swept through the plane, told stories of heroism and horror.
Survivors said the flight was routine until the plane hit turbulence about 10 minutes before landing and fell sharply.
"The plane was shaking and it was hailing hard, with the ice like marbles, and we asked ourselves if we should really be trying to land in such harsh weather," said US tourist Gabriel Vivas, 41, from Brooklyn. "It just didn't feel right."
Vivas, who was traveling with five family members who all survived, added: "As we were walking, I saw a 1 year old baby lying outside the plane in the mud, all bruised and with a broken arm. I went back and picked it up and we pushed our way through the brush. I knew I had to help save it."
Peru's Trade and Tourism Minister Alfredo Ferrero blamed bad weather but said the Andean country -- which attracts millions of tourists every year -- must upgrade its airlines and attract private investment in the sector.
"Air safety in Peru is nonexistent. Everyone knows that getting on a plane in Peru is an adventure," said lawmaker Jacques Rodrich, a member of Congress' transport commission.
Many of Peru's airports are little more than airstrips and only the international airport in Lima has radar. Pucallpa airport, built in the 1960s, has no lights or radar and planes cannot land there after dark.
TANS, founded in the 1960s by the air force to help serve remote jungle communities, became a commercial airline in 1998 but is heavily in debt. The crashed plane was built in 1983.
Peru has said it has had preliminary contacts about selling a stake in the airline to Air China.
