News. He set the example by swallowing the first matchstick-sized strip of frozen flesh. Soy uruguayo. Several survivors were determined to join the expedition team, including Roberto Canessa, one of the two medical students, but others were less willing or unsure of their ability to withstand such a physically exhausting ordeal. One of the team members, Roy Harley, was an amateur electronics enthusiast, and they recruited his help in the endeavour. The flight time from the pass to Curic is normally 11 minutes, but only three minutes later the pilot told Santiago that they were passing Curic and turning north. He flew south from Mendoza towards Malarge radiobeacon at flight level 180 (FL180, 18,000 feet (5,500m)). [15], They continued east the next morning. It was awful and long nights. He refused to give up hope. Today, the 16 survivors are a close-knit group who also meet each year on December 22, the day the rescue began, for a barbecue of beef steaks and pork sausages. Nando Parrado says they survivors 'donated their bodies' and made a pact. On 15 November, after several hours of walking east, the trio found the largely intact tail section of the aircraft containing the galley about 1.6km (1mi) east and downhill of the fuselage. The ight carried forty-ve passengers, including f-teen members of the Old Christians Rugby team. At sunset, while sipping cognac that they had found in the tail section, Parrado said, "Roberto, can you imagine how beautiful this would be if we were not dead men? : the story of the Andes survivors, Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the Mountain and My Long Trek Home, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash, Robindronath Ekhane Kawkhono Khete Aashenni, 1947 BSAA Avro Lancastrian Star Dust accident, Emergency position-indicating radiobeacon station, "A 40 aos del Milagro de los Andes (Accidente del FAU-571)", "The gravel road to Planchn Pass in the Andes", "When dead reckoning became deadly: remembering the Andes air disaster | Flight Safety Australia", "One Airline Career: I'm Alive: by AMS Pictures", "40 aos de la tragedia de los andes Militares en Taringa +11.200 Taringa", "Nando Parrado on his survival of the 1972 Andes air crash", "After the Plane Crash and the Cannibalism a Life of Hope", "ASN Aircraft accident Fairchild FH-227D T-571 El Tiburcio", "Uruguayan Air Force flight 571 | Crash, Rescue, & Facts", "True Survival Stories: Miracle In The Andes Survival Life", "Plane crash survivor describes the moment he resorted to cannibalism", "An iron cross in the mountains: The lonely site of the 1972 Andes flight disaster", "I Am Alive: The Crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571", "Survivor of 1972 Andes plane crash trusts Dallas firm to tell his tale in film | Cheryl Hall Columns Business News for Dallas, Texas The Dallas Morning News", "Survivor of 1972 Andes plane crash who resorted to cannibalism reveals struggle in new book, 'I Had to Survive' NY Daily News", "Alive: Rugby Team's Fabled Survival In Andes", "Sitio Oficial del accidente de los Andes Historia", "A Plane Carrying 45 People Crashed In The Andes 16 Of Them Survived By Eating The Others", "Alive: The Andes Accident 1972 | Official Site |", "Javier Methol: Businessman who survived for 72 days in the Andes after his plane crashed in 1972", "The Ghost of Uruguayan Air Force 571 Airpressman", "Fundadoras de la Biblioteca Nuestros hijos", "Tragedia de los Andes: sus protagonistas celebran la vida 40 aos despus", "Page in homage to victims by the survivors of the Andes", "*** Bruni Aventura *** San Rafael Mendoza Argentina", "December 23: On This Day in World History briefly", "Sergio Cataln who helped save Uruguayans in Andes in 1972 Passes Away", "Survivor of 1972 Andes Plane Crash Recalls How Victims Were Forced to Eat Friends' Bodies in New Book I Had to Survive", "Story Of The 1972 Andes Plane Crash In 'Out Of The Silence', "The director of 'Stranded' has lived with this story", "Stranded: The Andes Plane Crash Survivors", "2016 What Next Festival of Music brings opera back to Hamilton Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra", "The stories behind Ice Nine Kills' Every Trick In The Book album", Alive: Sixteen Men, Seventy-two Days, and Insurmountable Odds The Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes, "Back to the Andes Expedition 2006 with one of the survivors", Expedition with live streaming of biometrics and geo-location, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Uruguayan_Air_Force_Flight_571&oldid=1142432525, Parrado, Canessa and Vizintin set off to find help, Parrado and Canessa encounter Sergio Cataln, Esther Horta Prez de Nicola (wife of team physician), Eugenia Dolgay Diedug de Parrado (Fernando Parrado's mother), Lt. Col. Dante Hctor Lagurara (co-pilot), Graziela Augusto Gumila de Mariani (wedding guest), Susana Parrado (Fernando Parrado's sister), Liliana Navarro Petraglia de Methol (wife of Javier Methol), Gustavo "Coco" Nicolich* (veterinary student), Rafael Echavarren (dairy farming student), The incident is mentioned in the 1978 survival film, The incident is mentioned in a 2011 horror film, "The Plot Sickens", by the American metalcore band, The song "Snowcapped Andes Crash" appears on, This page was last edited on 2 March 2023, at 10:00. But we got used to it. Some feared eternal damnation. "If I had been told: 'I'm going to leave you in a mountain 4,000m high, 20C below zero (-4F) in shirtsleeves,' I would have said: I last 10 minutes.' The rugby players joked about the turbulence at first, until some passengers saw that the aircraft was very close to the mountain. Uruguayan Air Force flight 571 was flying members of a college rugby team and their relatives from Uruguay's capital Montevideo to Santiago, Chile, for a rugby game. The last eight survivors of the Uruguayan Air Force plane crash in the Andes in South America, huddle together in the craft's fuselage on their final night before rescue on Dec. 22, 1972.. And we can change the direction of our life if we propose to do it. Pilot Ferradas died instantly when the nose gear compressed the instrument panel against his chest, forcing his head out of the window; co-pilot Lagurara was critically injured and trapped in the crushed cockpit. Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, also called Miracle of the Andes or Spanish El Milagro de los Andes, flight of an airplane charted by a Uruguayan amateur rugby team that crashed in the Andes Mountains in Argentina on October 13, 1972, the wreckage of which was not located for more than two months. Only much later did Canessa learn that the road he saw to the east would have gotten them to rescue sooner and easier.[29][30]. In those intervening months 13 more of the 29 who made that pact died on the mountain, five from their injuries and eight more in a catastrophic avalanche that buried the stricken fuselage that had become their refuge. The survivors lacked medical supplies, cold-weather clothing and equipment or food, and only had three pairs of sunglasses among them to help prevent snow blindness. They became sicker from eating these. Another survivor Daniel Fernandez, 66, held the trophy that would have been the reward for the game to be played the day of the crash. He has made them human. Javier Methol and his wife Liliana, the only surviving female passenger, were the last survivors to eat human flesh. That "one of us" was Parrado, along with his friend Roberto Canessa, who somehow found the strength to climb out of the mountains nearly two months later. By chance, it hit the downward slope on the other side at the exact angle that allowed it to become a tube-like sledge, hurtling down into a bowl before hitting a snowdrift and coming to rest. "I would ask myself: is it worth doing this? The white plane was invisible in the snowy blanket of the mountain. In the documentary film Stranded, Canessa described how on the first night during the ascent, they had difficulty finding a place to put down the sleeping bag. "You and I are friends, Nando. Members of the amateur Old Christians Club rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, were scheduled to play a match against the Old Boys Club, an English rugby team in Santiago, Chile. Given that the FH-227 aircraft was fully loaded, this route would have required the pilot to very carefully calculate fuel consumption and to avoid the mountains. It was published by Crown . How so? It had its wings ripped off on impact, leading to the immediate death of 12 passengers and crew. [19], The survivors had very little food: eight chocolate bars, a tin of mussels, three small jars of jam, a tin of almonds, a few dates, candies, dried plums, and several bottles of wine. [24][25] With considerable difficulty, on the morning of 31 October, they dug a tunnel from the cockpit to the surface, only to encounter a furious blizzard that left them no choice but to stay inside the fuselage. Cataln talked with the other two men, and one of them remembered that several weeks before Carlos Pez's father had asked them if they had heard about the Andes plane crash. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. It was hard to put in your mouth, recalled Sabella, a successful businessman. They followed the river and reached the snowline. During the following 72 days, the survivors suffered extreme hardships, including exposure, starvation, and an avalanche, which led to the deaths of thirteen more passengers. [49] Sergio Cataln died on 11 February 2020[50] at the age of 91. Paez said he has made a career of traveling the world to lecture about his ordeal in the mountains. After some debate the next morning, they decided that it would be wiser to return to the tail, remove the aircraft's batteries, and take them back to the fuselage so they might power up the radio and make an SOS call to Santiago for help.[17]. Estamos dbiles. We had long since run out of the meagre pickings we'd found on the plane, and there was no vegetation or animal life to be found. [3] Two more passengers fell out of the open rear of the fuselage. This story has been shared 139,641 times. After the initial shock of their plane crashing into the Andes mountains on that fateful Friday the 13th of October 1972, Harley and 31 other survivors found themselves in the pitch dark in minus . Man Utd revive interest in Barcelona star De Jong, Alonso pips Verstappen with Hamilton fourth ahead of thrilling pole fight, Experience live F1 races onboard with any driver in 2023, Papers: Chelsea divided on future of head coach Potter, PL Predictions: Maddison to spark Leicester into life, How Casemiro silenced doubters to become Man Utd cult hero, What is Chelsea's best XI? A Uruguayan rugby team crashes in the Andes Mountains and has to survive the extremely cold temperatures and rough climate. Eduardo Strauch joins me now from Montevideo in Uruguay. [17] Since the plane crash, Canessa had lost almost half of his body weight, about 44 kilograms (97lb). As you can imagine, it has been the most awful, terrible days of my life. Four-wheel drive vehicles transport travelers from the village of El Sosneado to Puesto Araya, near the abandoned Hotel Termas del Sosneado. The survivors were forced to resort to extreme measures to stay alive. One of the propellers sliced through the fuselage as the wing it was attached to was severed. This was possible because the bodies had been preserved with the freezing temperatures and the snow. On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 left the city of Mendoza, Argentina carrying the Old Christians Rugby Club of Montevideo, Uruguay to a scheduled game in Santiago, Chile. His mother had taught him to sew when he was a boy, and with the needles and thread from the sewing kit found in his mother's cosmetic case, he began to work to speed the progress, Carlitos taught others to sew, and we all took our turns Coche [Inciarte], Gustavo [Zerbino], and Fito [Strauch] turned out to be our best and fastest tailors. [22][23], Seventeen days after the crash, near midnight on 29 October, an avalanche struck the aircraft containing the survivors as they slept. Parrado disagreed and they argued without reaching a decision. In a sense, our friends were some of the first organ donors in the world they helped to nourish us and kept us alive., The group made their decision after consuming the food they had on the plane, which included eight chocolate bars, a tin of mussels, three small jars of jam, some almonds and dates and several bottles of wine. Fell from aircraft, missing: The survivors' courage under extremely adverse conditions has been described as "a beacon of hope to [their] generation, showing what can be accomplished with persistence and determination in the presence of unsurpassable odds, and set our minds to attain a common aim". The pilots were astounded at the difficult terrain the two men had crossed to reach help. Then, "he began to climb, until the plane was nearly vertical and it began to stall and shake. STRAUCH: Even now, 47 years later, people - when they connect with our story, they get so many positive things for their lives. It filled the fuselage and killed eight people: Enrique Platero, Liliana Methol, Gustavo Nicolich, Daniel Maspons, Juan Menendez, Diego Storm, Carlos Roque, and Marcelo Perez. Eating human flesh doesnt taste like anything, really, said fellow survivor Carlitos Paez, the son of an Uruguayan artist. And after almost 2 1/2 months, the 16 survivors were rescued. Unable to obtain official permission to retrieve his son's body, Ricardo Echavarren mounted an expedition on his own with hired guides. But after entering severe turbulence, the pilot made a mistake and began descending while they were still over the mountains. He had prearranged with the priest who had buried his son to mark the bag containing his son's remains. The wreck was located at an elevation of 3,570 metres (11,710ft) in the remote Andes of far western Argentina, just east of the border with Chile. The pilot was able to bring the aircraft nose over the ridge, but at 3:34p.m., the lower part of the tail-cone may have clipped the ridge at 4,200 metres (13,800ft). With no other choice, on the third day they began to eat the raw flesh of their newly dead friends. But it didn't. [17], The Chilean Air Search and Rescue Service (SARS) was notified within the hour that the flight was missing. Here, he was able to stop a truck and reach the police station at Puente Negro. He attempted to keep her alive without success, as during the eighth day she succumbed to her injuries. Or was this the only sane thing to do? Cataln threw bread to the men across the river. GARCIA-NAVARRO: And so two members of the team, dressed in only street clothes, miraculously were able to make it over the mountains and find help. On that morning conditions over the Andes had not improved but changes were expected by the early afternoon. They took over harvesting flesh from their deceased friends and distributing it to the others. [26] Alfredo Delgado spoke for the survivors. [36], The survivors held a press conference on 28 December at Stella Maris College in Montevideo, where they recounted the events of the past 72 days. They had climbed a mountain on the border of Argentina and Chile, meaning the trekkers were still tens of kilometres from the green valleys of Chile. The plane crashed into the Andes mountains on Friday 13 October 1972. When someone cancelled at the last minute, Graziela Mariani bought the seat so she could attend her oldest daughter's wedding. He decided his story was so important that he had to share it beyond just his family and friends. [15], Before the avalanche, a few of the survivors became insistent that their only way of survival would be to climb over the mountains and search for help. Even to us, they were very small pieces of frozen meat. Pilot Ferradas had flown across the Andes 29 times previously. The avalanche completely buried the fuselage and filled the interior to within 1 metre (3ft 3in) of the roof. The plane was so far off course that the searchers were looking in the wrong place. They placed a plaque on the pile of rocks inscribed:[39], EL MUNDO A SUS HERMANOS URUGUAYOSCERCA, OH DIOS DE TI [19] A Catholic priest heard the survivors' confessions and told them that they were not damned for cannibalism (eating human flesh), given the in extremis nature of their survival situation. Survivor Roberto Canessa described the decision to eat the pilots and their dead friends and family members: Our common goal was to survive but what we lacked was food. I was very young. GARCIA-NAVARRO: Strauch finally decided to tell his story publicly after a mountaineer discovered his jacket and wallet at the crash site years later and returned it to him. 'Alive' is thunderous entertainment: I know the events by rote, nonetheless I found it electric. [citation needed], As the men gathered wood to build a fire, one of them saw three men on horseback at the other side of the river. It was later made into a Hollywood movie in 1993. On October 13, 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 went down in the Andes along the Argentine-Chilean border. The plane slammed into a mountainside in rough weather when the pilot veered off-course. [16], Canessa and Gustavo Zerbino, both medical students, acted quickly to assess the severity of people's wounds and treat those they could help most. [4], The pilot applied maximum power in an attempt to gain altitude. Meanwhile, Parrado and Canessa were brought on horseback to Los Maitenes de Curic, where they were fed and allowed to rest.