Their job was saving lives. They lost their own in Brazil’s horrifying plane crash

Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Arianne Risso worked every day to help her patients battle cancer. That made it all the more heart wrenching when her life — along with that of seven other doctors — ended abruptly after a plane tumbled from the sky in Brazil.

She boarded the ill-fated flight Friday in the city of Cascavel, in Parana state, bound for Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport. It crashed in the city of Vinhedo, and footage of the ATR 72 twin-engine turboprop plunging while in a flat spin horrified people across Brazil.

It smashed into the backyard of a home inside a gated community and transformed into a fiery wreck. All 62 people aboard were killed, among them the eight doctors, according to a statement from Parana’s Medical Council. Risso and at least one colleague were headed for an oncology conference to sharpen their knowledge about a disease that kills tens of thousands of Brazilians every year.

“They were people used to saving lives, and now they lost theirs in such tragic circumstances,” Parana Gov. Ratinho Júnior told journalists in Vinhedo on Friday, adding that he had friends on the doomed plane. “It is a sad day.”

Risso’s cousin, Stephany Albuquerque, recalled in a phone interview that the two often played together when she was young. Even then, Risso wanted to become a doctor and, as she grew older, applied herself so intensively to her studies that she rarely went out on the town. Medicine was her calling.

“Arianne treated people who were terminally ill at a time in their lives when they were struggling. But Arianne was always available and did everything with a lot of love,” Albuquerque told The Associated Press by phone from Florida, where she now lives. “She wasn’t the kind of doctor who would the tell the patient, ‘This is your illness, take this.’ No, Arianne took care of people. … She would give out her personal phone number to patients.”

Risso, 34, was flying with her colleague Mariana Belim, 31. The two had been in residencies at Cascavel’s cancer hospital, and a statement from the institution praised them for the conscientiousness, care and respect with which they treated their patients.

“It’s no wonder that praise for them both would often reach us. Their love of the profession was very clear,” the hospital said.

Willian Rodrigo Feistler, a general practitioner who grew up in Cascavel, knew six people who died in the crash and was particularly close to Belim, with whom he studied and had maintained a 15-year friendship.

“Mariana was serene with a melancholic temperament, but very intelligent, empathetic and devoted to her profession,” Feistler said by phone from Cascavel. “She dedicated much of her life to studies and medical training. She had already specialized in clinical medicine and was completing her specialization in clinical oncology.”

José Roberto Leonel Ferreira, a recently retired doctor who also died in the fiery wreck, was one of Feistler’s teachers during his undergraduate studies. He had a radiology clinic in Cascavel.

“I went over cases with him on several occasions. He was a receptive person who helped other doctors in the discussion of cases to reach diagnoses,” Feistler said.

Brazil’s Federal Council of Medicine said the loss of the doctors left Brazil’s medical world in mourning, and expressed its solidarity for the victims’ friends and relatives. They were venturing forth from Cascavel in search of knowledge as a means to better treat their patients, its statement said.

For now, there are more questions about the crash than answers. Metsul, one of Brazil’s most respected meteorological companies, said Friday that there were reports of severe icing in Sao Paulo state around the time of the crash. Local media cited experts pointing to that as a potential cause, although others cautioned against jumping to a conclusion.

Both the plane’s “black boxes” — one with flight data and the other with cockpit audio — were recovered. The air force’s center for the investigation and prevention of air accidents began analyzing them at its laboratory in the nation’s capital, Brasilia. Airports Minister Silvio Costa Filho said the center was also opening a criminal probe. The airline Voepass and the French-Italian ATR manufacturer are assisting investigations, they said in statements.

All of Brazil — but in particular victims’ loved ones — are eager to learn why these people were ripped from this world.

“It wasn’t God who took my daughter; it wasn’t God, because he chose her to save lives,” Risso’s mother, Fatima Albuquerque, told reporters Sunday. She said she blamed the crash on profit-hungry capitalists and authorities’ neglect.

Stephany Albuquerque echoed her indignation.

“I only hope that the prosecutors will investigate,” she said. “I hope justice is done, because that’s the least my cousin and the other 61 people deserve.”