![]() ![]() “We have been through so much,” one of the climbers, Roberto Canessa, said to Parrado, the other. They saw little but more mountains and a valley that wound through them. Fighting cold and crippling altitude sickness, they somehow ascended the nearest peak, all 15,000 feet of it, and surveyed the surroundings. They fashioned a sled, sewed together material for a sleeping bag and selected those who would make the march.Īfter weeks of preparation and aborted efforts, the group-initially three, but then two, to save resources-set off to the west, in the direction of Chile. ![]() And they had no suitable clothing or equipment. It seemed an impossible task: None of them were mountaineers. An avalanche all but buried the fuselage, killing another eight, and strengthening the conviction of those remaining that they now had to strike out across the mountains in search of civilization and rescue. ![]() Using a shard of glass, some of the survivors sliced thin slices from the buttocks of one of the corpses, and silently, they began to eat. In the high altitude of the Andes, it was a matter of time before their bodies consumed themselves completely. I did the same on the third day, and when I finally nibbled the peanut down to nothing, there was no food left at all.” One morning, Parrado later wrote, he found himself cradling a single chocolate-covered peanut: “On the first day, I slowly sucked the chocolate off the peanut … On the second day … I sucked gently on the peanut for hours, allowing myself only a tiny nibble now and then. But their rations were woefully inadequate. They used aluminum from the seat backs to warm up snow and provide a steady stream of drinking water. They piled up airplane seats to create shelter in the broken fuselage, where they huddled day and night. Those with the strength and awareness to do so immediately began tending to the more seriously wounded. Starvation Drives Survivors to Resort to Cannibalism The harrowing experience became known as the “Miracle of the Andes.”Ī dead body from the Andes Flight Disaster lies near the wreckage. While world reaction was initially one of revulsion, that soon gave way to an appreciation of the fortitude and inventiveness that enabled them to beat seemingly impossible odds. It later emerged that those who survived had done so in part by eating their fallen dead comrades. By the time their ordeal ended, an almost unfathomable 72 days after it began, the total number of survivors had dwindled to 16. There were now 29 survivors, alone in the bitter cold of the Andes, with no way of contacting the outside world and their plane’s white fuselage all but invisible in the snow to any would-be rescuers that passed overhead. ![]() Seven of those on board had been sucked out of the fuselage before the plane had crashed four more, including the pilot and Parrado’s mother, were killed upon impact and by the time Parrado regained consciousness, a further five had also perished-including the co-pilot and Parrado’s friend Abal. Watch now Why It Was Called 'Miracle of the Andes' The tail was missing-cut away from the rest of the fuselage by the right wing, which had sheared off after hitting the mountainside. It was Friday, October 13, 1972, and the Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild F-227 had crashed into a glacial valley high in the Andes. When he awoke, almost 48 hours had passed. “Is it normal to fly so close?” one of them, Panchito Abal, asked his friend Nando Parrado. Then the plane hit a second air pocket, and dropped some more-and now, suddenly, as it fell beneath the cloud cover, the passengers could see a mountain face just 10 or 20 feet away. Most of the 45 on board were in their late teens and early 20s, members of a team traveling to play an exhibition in Chile, and they whooped and hollered when their chartered plane hit turbulence over the Andes and dropped several hundred feet. How they survived has inspired both admiration and horror.Īs the plane encountered its first signs of trouble, none of the passengers panicked. On October 13, 1972, a chartered twin engine plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crash landed high in the Andes mountains. ![]()
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