It took the authorities up to seven hours to reach the survivors of the plane crash in north west Romania on Monday evening. If it was not for the teams of locals who knew the remote area where the medical plane crashed while on its way to harvest organs for a transplant, the seven people on board could have been found much later.

Two of the passengers have since died, a medical student and the pilot, an experienced aviator with more than 19,000 flight hours.

The plane crash landed in a hardly reachable mountainous area in Transylvania, in an area with a 30 centimeter layer of snow, up on a peak shrouded by intense fog.

One of the doctors on the plane called the emergency service 112, which is supposed to automatically provide the location of the call. But the rescuers still had to go through some 10 kilometers of mountain terrain to find the plane and the survivors.

It was a showcase of how community involvement can save lives. A 33-year old local was first on the site, and it was more by accident that they were found. The villager took some of his clothes off and gave them to the victims, lit a fire to keep them warm, and made a barrow out of tree branches to carry them, and called the mountain rescuers. Some say authorities would not have found the survivors if it was not for the locals.

Unfortunately, two people had died in the meantime. It seems the pilot only lived about two hours after the crash. The other five people on the plane are now in hospital, and taken care of. One of them, the co-pilot, was in a more critical condition. Everyone in Romania is probably keeping an eye for updates.

Investigations are ongoing on many levels and in many institutions, including on the cause of the plane crash, but also on the cause of the late response. Some of the doctors on the plane were in constant phone touch with colleagues from Bucharest, and the authorities are now trying to figure out why it took so long to get data on the exact spot where the phone calls were made.

This unfortunate event will probably change a few things in Romania. When a team of doctors on their way to harvest organs and save a life crashes with a 40-year-old plane and it takes so many hours for them to be found, many things must change, on many levels. Unfortunately, as it is frequently the case all over the world, a bad thing has to happen to trigger a good change.

Corina Chirileasa, corina@romania-insider.com