1972 Andes flight disaster
Key vocabulary
Fuselage, vertical stabilizer, snow blindness, rationing, mountain pass, decent
Important names to know
Survivors: Nando Parrado, Roberto Canessa
Rescuer: Catalan
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571, also known as the Andes flight disaster, was a flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby team, their friends, and family that crashed in the Andes on October 13, 1972. More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash, and several others from the cold and injury. The last 16 survivors were rescued on December 23, 1972, more than two months after the crash.
The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 11,800 ft altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the dead passengers who had been preserved in the snow. Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10-day trek across the Andes, found a Chilean who gave them food and then alerted authorities about the existence of the other survivors.
The crash
On the afternoon of Friday 13 the plane was flying through a pass in the mountains. They were not as far west as they thought they were and, as a result, when they started their descent before the plane had passed through the mountains. Dipping into the cloud cover while still over the mountains, the plane soon crashed on an unnamed peak. The plane clipped the peak at 13,800, which cause the right wing and vertical stabilizer to break off. If the passengers would have looked back at this point they would have only seen the sky and not the inside rear of the plane. The plane then clipped a second peak which cut off the left wing and left the plane as just a fuselage flying through the air. The plane then hit the ground and slid down a steep mountain slope before finally coming to rest in a snow bank.
Early days
Of the 45 people on the plane, 18 died in the crash or shortly after. The remaining 27 had trouble surviving in the freezing mountains at such a high altitude. Many had suffered injuries from the crash, including broken legs from the aircraft's seats piling together. The survivors lacked equipment such as cold-weather clothing and footwear for the area, and sun glasses to prevent snow blindness. They also lacked any kind of medical supplies.
The search
Search parties from three countries looked for the missing plane. However, since the plane was white, it blended in with the snow, making it virtually invisible from the sky. At one point the survivors tried to use several sticks of lipstick recovered from the luggage to write SOS on the roof of the plane, but stopped when they could see that they did not have enough lipstick to make letters that could be seen from the air. The survivors of the crash had found a small radio on the plane and heard the news that the search was cancelled after 8 days.
Upon hearing the news that the search had been stopped many began to sob and pray, all except Parrado, who looked calmly up the mountains which rose to the west… One of the survivors named Nicolich looked at the sad faces which were turned towards him and shouted, 'Hey boys, 'there's some good news! We just heard on the radio. They've called off the search.' . . . there was silence. As the hopelessness of their problem filled them, they wept. 'Why is that good news?' Paez shouted angrily at Nicolich. 'Because it means,' Nicolich said, 'that we're going to get out of here on our own.' The courage of this one boy prevented a flood of total despair.
Cannibalism
The survivors had a small amount of food: a few chocolate bars, snacks and several bottles of wine. During the days following the crash they divided out this food in very small amounts so they would not eat it all at once. They also came up with a way to melt snow into water by using metal from the seats and placing snow on it. The snow then melted in the sun and dripped into empty wine bottles. Even with this strict rationing, their food supply shrunk quickly. There were no plants or animals on the snow-covered mountain. The group thus survived by everyone making a decision to eat flesh from the bodies of the dead. This decision was not taken lightly, as most were classmates or close friends. In his book, Miracle in the Andes: Nando Parrado comments on this decision:
At high altitude, the body's caloric needs are very high... we were starving, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so much that we searched anyway ...again and again we searched the plane for anything to eat. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they'd been treated with would do us more harm than good. We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw to eat, but found only 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.
Hard decisions
Before the avalanche, a few of the survivors said that their only way of survival would be to climb over the mountains themselves and search for help. Several brief tries were made in the area around the plane in the first few weeks after the crash, but they found that altitude sickness, dehydration, snow blindness, hunger, and the extreme cold of the nights made climbing any significant distance an impossible task.
Therefore it was decided that a group of people would be chosen, and then given the most rations of food and the warmest of clothes, and spared the daily manual labor around the crash site that was essential for the group's survival, so that they might build their strength. At Canessa's urging, the explores waited nearly seven weeks, to allow for the arrival of spring, and with it higher temperatures.
Although the people were hoping to get to Chile, a large mountain lay due west of the crash site, blocking any effort they made to walk in that direction. The people began heading east, hoping that at some point the valley that they were in would do a U-turn and allow them to start walking west. After several hours of walking east, the trio unexpectedly found the tail section of the plane. Within and around the tail were numerous suitcases that had belonged to the passengers, containing cigarettes, candy, clean clothing and even some comic books. The group decided to camp there that night inside the tail section, and continue east the next morning. However, on the second night of the trip, which was their first night sleeping outside exposed to the elements, the group nearly froze to death. After some debate the next morning, they decided that it would be wiser to return to the tail, remove the plane's batteries and bring them back to the fuselage so that they might power up the radio and make an SOS call to Santiago for help.
Radio
Unknown to any of the team members was the fact that the plane's electrical system used alternating current while the batteries in the tail naturally produced direct current, making the plan useless from the beginning. After several days of trying to make the radio work at the tail, the explores gave up and returned to the fuselage with the knowledge that they would in fact have to climb out of the mountains if they were to have any hope of being rescued.
The sleeping bag
It was now clear that the only way out was to climb over the mountains to the west. However, they also realized that unless they found a way to survive the freezing temperature of the nights, a trek was impossible. It was at this point that the idea for a sleeping bag was raised.
In his book, Miracle in the Andes, Nando Parrado would comment 34 years later upon the making of the sleeping bag: The second challenge would be to protect ourselves from exposure, especially after sundown. At this time of year we could expect daytime temperatures well above freezing, but the nights were still cold enough to kill us, and we knew now that we couldn't expect to find shelter on the open slopes. We needed a way to survive the long nights without freezing, and the insulation we'd taken from the tail section gave us our solution ... as we brainstormed about the trip, we realized we could sew the patches together to create a large warm quilt. Then we realized that by folding the quilt in half and stitching the seams together, we could create an insulated sleeping bag large enough for all three explorers to sleep in. With the warmth of three bodies trapped by the insulating cloth, we might be able to weather the coldest nights. With the needles and thread from a sewing kit found from a cosmetic case they were eventually able to do this.
After the sleeping bag was completed and another survivor died, the hesitant Canessa was finally persuaded to set out, and the three explorers took to the mountain on 12 December.
12 December
On 12 December 1972, some two months after the crash, Parrado, Canessa and Vizintín began their trek up the mountain. Parrado took the lead, and often had to be called to slow down, though the thin oxygen made it difficult for all of them. It was still bitterly cold but the sleeping bag allowed them to live through the nights. In the film Stranded, Canessa called the first night during the climb, where they had difficulty finding a place to use the sleeping bag, the worst night of his life.
On the third day of the trek, Parrado reached the top of the mountain before the other two explores. Stretched before him as far as the eye could see were more mountains. In fact, he had just climbed one of the mountains 15,260 ft which forms the border between Argentina and Chile, meaning that they were still 5 miles from the green valleys of Chile. However, after seeing a small "Y" in the distance, he thought that a way out of the mountains must be ahead and refused to give up hope. Knowing that the hike would take more energy than they'd originally planned for, Parrado and Canessa sent Vizintín back to the crash site, as they were rapidly running out of rations. Since the return was entirely downhill, it only took him one-hour to get back to the fuselage using a makeshift sled.
Finding help
Parrado and Canessa hiked for several more days. First, they were able to actually reach the narrow valley that Parrado had seen on the top of the mountain. They followed the river and finally reached the end of the snowline. Gradually, there appeared more and more signs of human presence, first some signs of camping, and finally on the ninth day, some cows. When they rested that evening, they were very tired and Canessa seemed unable to proceed further. As Parrado was gathering wood to build a fire, Canessa noticed what looked like a man on a horse at the other side of the river. At first it seemed he had been imagining the man on the horse, but eventually they saw three men on horseback. After asking them for help one of the riders named Catlin first went to get food for Parrado and Canessa. Then to get more help Catalán rode on horseback for many hours westward. Eventually we he was able to stop a truck and reach the police station at Puente Negro, where the news was finally told to the Army command in Santiago. The following morning the rescue expedition left Santiago. Nando Parrado was recruited to fly back to the mountain in order to guide the helicopters to the remaining survivors. The news that people had survived the October 13th crash of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 had also leaked to the international press and a flood of reporters began to appear along the narrow route from Puente Negro to Termas del Flaco. The reporters hoped to be able to see and interview Parrado and Canessa about the crash and the following ordeal.
The mountain rescue
In the morning of the day when the rescue started, those remaining at the crash site heard on their radio that Parrado and Canessa had been successful in finding help and that afternoon, on December 22, two helicopters carrying search and rescue climbers arrived. The weather was so bad that the two helicopters were able to take only half of the survivors. They departed, leaving the rescue team and remaining survivors at the crash site to once again sleep in the fuselage, until a second expedition with helicopters could arrive the following morning. The second expedition arrived at daybreak on December 23rd and all 16 survivors were rescued. All of the survivors were taken to hospitals in Santiago and treated for altitude sickness, dehydration, frostbite, broken bones, scurvy, and malnutrition.
When first rescued, the survivors initially explained that they had eaten some cheese they had carried with them, planning to discuss the details in private with their families. However, they were pushed into the public eye when photos were leaked to the press and sensational, unauthorized articles were published. They survivors have since written books and made movies about their experience.