Hundreds of vehicles lit up remote Peruvian airstrip for emergency night-flight

Their lights blaring in the night, hundreds of vehicles 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, cars and auto rickshaws heeded a call on Wednesday night from a radio station to race to the 800-metre airstrip in Contamana, in one of Peru's poorest regions.

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.

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"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.