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STRAUCH: Yeah. A storm blew fiercely, and they finally found a spot on a ledge of rock on the edge of an abyss. [15][16], At least four died from the impact of the fuselage hitting the snow bank, which ripped the remaining seats from their anchors and hurled them to the front of the plane: team physician Dr. Francisco Nicola and his wife Esther Nicola; Eugenia Parrado and Fernando Vazquez (medical student). The avalanche completely buried the fuselage and filled the interior to within 1 metre (3ft 3in) of the roof. Upon his return to the abandoned Hotel Termas with his son's remains, he was arrested for grave robbing. The boys, from Uruguay's coast had never seen snow before. The Uruguayan air force plane that carried the team crashed in a mountain pass in October 1972 en route from Montevideo to Santiago. We knew the answer, but it was too terrible to contemplate. Nando Parrado woke from his coma after three days to learn that his mother had died and that his 19-year-old sister Susana Parrado was severely injured. [10] The aircraft's VOR/DME instrument displayed to the pilot a digital reading of the distance to the next radio beacon in Curic. The death of Perez, the team captain and leader of the survivors, along with the loss of Liliana Methol, who had nursed the survivors "like a mother and a saint", were extremely discouraging to those remaining alive.[16][22]. 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. [17], Knowing that rescue efforts had been called off and faced with starvation and death, those still alive agreed that, should they die, the others might consume their bodies to live. The passengers removed the broken seats and other debris from the aircraft and fashioned a crude shelter. Pic: Paramount / Touchstone Pictures, The group survived for two and a half months in the Andes, The players were part of the Old Christians rugby team, A 2002 image of Roberto Canessa (R) with Sergio Catalan - who found the men. And after almost 2 1/2 months, the 16 survivors were rescued. 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. The impact crushed the cockpit with the two pilots inside, killing Ferradas immediately. Pilot Ferradas had flown across the Andes 29 times previously. All hope seemed lost when they located the broken off tail of the plane, found batteries to get the radio to work, only to hear via a crackly message over the airwaves on their 10th day on the mountain that the search had been called off. But it was impossible to get the proteins from there, so we start a mental process to convince our minds that was the only way. Four planes searched that afternoon until dark. This edition also has a new subtitle: Sixteen Men, Seventy-two Days, and Insurmountable Odds: The Classic Adventure of Survival in the Andes. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. "I came back to life after having died," said Parrado, whose mother and sister died in the Andes. The passengers decided that a few members would seek help. He was in the ninth row of seats. Please, we cannot even walk. "That was probably the moment when the pilots saw the black ridge rising dead ahead. Fairly early on, you say that hearing your cousin Adolfo say out loud what many were thinking - that you were going to have to eat the bodies - gave you a kind of relief. Parrado was one of 45 rugby players, family, friends and crew making a routine flight across the Andes from Uruguay to Chile. Contact would have killed them all, but by a miracle they missed the obstacles and more than half of those onboard "barely had a scratch on them". This year, the 50th anniversary of their ordeal was celebrated with a stamp by the Uruguayan post office, the newspaper reported. By complete luck, the plane's wingless descent down into the snowbowl had found the only narrow chute without giant rocks and boulders. One of the propellers sliced through the fuselage as the wing it was attached to was severed. But after entering severe turbulence, the pilot made a mistake and began descending while they were still over the mountains. "[29] They followed the ridge towards the valley and descended a considerable distance. [40] The father of one victim had received word from a survivor that his son wished to be buried at home. They felt that the faith and friendship which inspired them in the cordillera do not emerge from these pages. Parrado disagreed and they argued without reaching a decision. The rescuers believed that no one could have survived the crash. [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. At Canessa's urging, they waited nearly seven days to allow for higher temperatures. 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. La sociedad de la nieve, 2nd ed. Canessa said it was the worst night of his life. When the fog lifted at about noon, Parrado volunteered to lead the helicopters to the crash site. [English: The world to its Uruguayan brothersClose, oh God, to you], They doused the remains of the fuselage in gasoline and set it alight. And there were already signs that the flight wouldn't be easy. [47], In March 2006, the families of those aboard the flight had a black obelisk monument built at the crash site memorializing those who lived and died.[48]. [45][46], The crash location attracts hundreds of people from all over the world who pay tribute to the victims and survivors and learn about how they survived. Four members of the search and rescue team volunteered to stay with the seven survivors remaining on the mountain. The 28 people crammed themselves into the broken fuselage in a space about 2.5 by 3 metres (8ft 2in 9ft 10in). He had prearranged with the priest who had buried his son to mark the bag containing his son's remains. The steep terrain only permitted the pilot to touch down with a single skid. They trekked for over ten days, traveling 61 km (38 miles). When they rested that evening they were very tired, and Canessa seemed unable to proceed further. The Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was the chartered flight of a Fairchild FH-227D from Montevideo, Uruguay to Santiago, Chile, that crashed in the Andes mountains on October 13, 1972. The crew were dead and the radio didn't have any batteries. 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. The book inspired the song "The Plot Sickens" on the album Every Trick in the Book by the American metalcore band Ice Nine Kills. To get there, the plane would have to fly over the snow-capped peaks of the Andes Mountains. [4], The last remaining survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the crash. But they did. Nando Parrado had a skull fracture and remained in a coma for three days. Eduardo Strauch survived the 1972 Andes plane crash of the Uruguayan rugby team. They had no technical gear, no map or compass, and no climbing experience. He attempted to keep her alive without success, as during the eighth day she succumbed to her injuries. One of the team members, Roy Harley, was an amateur electronics enthusiast, and they recruited his help in the endeavour. [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. 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. Regardless, at 3:21p.m., shortly after transiting the pass, Lagurara contacted Santiago and notified air traffic controllers that he expected to reach Curic a minute later. The accident and subsequent survival became known as the Andes flight disaster (Tragedia de los Andes) and the Miracle of the Andes (Milagro de los Andes). On 23 December 1972, two months after the crash, the last of the 16 survivors were rescued. [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. Officers of the Chilean SARS listened to the radio transmissions and concluded the aircraft had come down in one of the most remote and inaccessible areas of the Andes. Here, he was able to stop a truck and reach the police station at Puente Negro. [4], Thirty-three remained alive, although many were seriously or critically injured, with wounds including broken legs which had resulted from the aircraft's seats collapsing forward against the luggage partition and the pilot's cabin. Twenty-nine guys, we donated our bodies, hand in hand we made a pact. Cataln threw bread to the men across the river. The food ran out after a week, and the group tried to eat parts of the airplane, such as the cotton inside the seats and leather. NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro speaks with him about his story of hope in his book, Out of the Silence: After. Instead, I lasted 72 days. This story has been shared 139,641 times. They also realized that unless they found a way to survive the freezing temperature of the nights, a trek was impossible. He believes that rugby saved their lives. Instead, it was customary for this type of aircraft to fly a longer 600-kilometre (370mi), 90-minute U-shaped route[2] from Mendoza south to Malarge using the A7 airway (known today as UW44). I tried to enjoy my friend, my dog, my passions, a second at a time," said Parrado, who has since worked as a TV host, race car driver and motivational speaker. "I would ask myself: is it worth doing this? Cundo nos van a buscar arriba? We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw, but found only inedible upholstery foam Again and again, I came to the same conclusion: unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing, there was nothing here but aluminum, plastic, ice, and rock. On October 13, 1972, a charter jet carrying the Old Christians Club rugby union team across the Andes mountains crashed, killing 29 of the 45 people on board. According to Read, some rationalized the act of cannibalism as equivalent to the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. Paez said he has made a career of traveling the world to lecture about his ordeal in the mountains. Eduardo Strauch joins me now from Montevideo in Uruguay. Of the 45 passengers aboard, 16 survived by feeding on dead family members and friends preserved in the snow. However, given the circumstances, including that the bodies were in Argentina, the Chilean rescuers left the bodies at the site until authorities could make the necessary decisions. 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. Had we turned into brute savages? Alive is a 1974 book by the British writer Piers Paul Read documenting the events of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. Or was this the only sane thing to do? 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. They were initially so revolted by the experience that they could eat only skin, muscle and fat. I was very young. We have been through so much. [4] He heard the news that the search was cancelled on their 11th day on the mountain. Piers Paul Read's book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors described the moments after this discovery: The others who had clustered around Roy, upon hearing the news, began to sob and pray, all except [Nando] Parrado, who looked calmly up at the mountains which rose to the west. They planned to discuss the details of how they survived, including their cannibalism, in private with their families. 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 . "It's something that very few people experience." Others justified it according to a Bible verse found in John 15:13: 'No man hath greater love than this: that he lay down his life for his friends. The Chilean military photographed the bodies and mapped the area. But Nando Parrado's story is so extraordinary, so unlikely, that 43 years later it still feels like a miraculous coming together of numerous miracles all at once. A federal judge and the local mayor intervened to obtain his release, and Echavarren later obtained legal permission to bury his son.[2]. The author interviewed many of the survivors as well as the family members of the passengers before writing this book to obtain facts about the crash. The survivors tried to use lipstick recovered from the luggage to write an SOS on the roof of the aircraft, but they quit after realizing that they lacked enough lipstick to make letters visible from the air. They were treated for a variety of conditions, including altitude sickness, dehydration, frostbite, broken bones, scurvy, and malnutrition. They now used their training to help the injured passengers. Editorial ALreves, S.L., Bercelona, Spain, Read, Piers Paul. On the second day, 11 aircraft from Argentina, Chile and Uruguay searched for the downed flight. They improvised in other ways. Twenty-nine people initially survived that crash, and their story of struggle in the mountains became the subject of books and movies, most famously "Alive." EFL: Boro, Birmingham, Rotherham lead LIVE! 2022. [4], The pilot applied maximum power in an attempt to gain altitude. 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. Alive tells the story of an Uruguayan rugby team (who were alumni of Stella Maris College), and their friends and family who were involved in the airplane crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. Meanwhile, Parrado and Canessa were brought on horseback to Los Maitenes de Curic, where they were fed and allowed to rest. They carried the remaining survivors to hospitals in Santiago for evaluation. 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. [12][37] The survivors received public backlash initially, but after they explained the pact the survivors had made to sacrifice their flesh if they died to help the others survive, the outcry diminished and the families were more understanding. [7][3] The aircraft, FAU 571, was four years old and had 792 airframe hours. I want to live. They hoped to get to Chile to the west, but a large mountain lay west of the crash site, persuading them to try heading east first. We were 29 people at the first. Sun 14 Oct 2012 09.29 EDT The surviving members of a Uruguayan rugby team have played a match postponed four decades ago when their plane crashed in the Andes, stranding them for 72 days. ', Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images, Photo by EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP via Getty Images. The story was told in 1993 film Alive. 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. [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. When the supply of flesh was diminished, they also ate hearts, lungs and even brains. The news of the missing flight reached Uruguayan media about 6:00p.m. that evening.