Mon, 10 October 2022
On October 13, 1972, a plane carrying an amateur Uruguayan rugby team, along with relatives and supporters, to an away match in Chile crashed in the Andes with 45 people on board.
Sixteen young men managed to survive for 72 days, at sub-zero temperatures and with very little food, before two of them found help after a 10-day trek across the mountains in waist-deep snow.
The so-called "Miracle of the Andes" gained global notoriety when the survivors, who were devout Catholics, admitted they had eaten parts of their dead companions' bodies to stay alive.
AFP reporters in Chile and Uruguay covered the dramatic events, which were recounted in "Alive", a best-selling book that was later made into a movie.
Here is how it unfolded:
- The crash -
On the evening of October 13, 1973, a chartered military plane carrying the Old Christians rugby team from the Argentinian city of Mendoza to the Chilean capital Santiago disappears from radars near the Chilean city of Curico.
Aircraft from Chile, Argentina and Uruguay search for the plane but fail to spot the white fuselage against the snow.
After eight days, the search is called off.
- 'Come rescue us' -
Two months later, on December 22, 1972, the world is stunned by news that there are survivors, two of whom, Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, made it out of the mountains on foot to find help.
"They spot a muleteer while following a river that winds around the foot of the mountains. Exhausted, they throw a stone across the water to him, with a message scrawled on a piece of paper attached to it, and then began praying while waiting to be rescued," AFP reported.
The message reads: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains. I am Uruguayan. We have been walking for 10 days... In the plane, there are 14 injured people. We have to get out of here quickly, and we don't know how. We don't have any food. We are weak. When will you come and fetch us? Please, we cannot even walk. Where are we?"
The muleteer arranges for them to be rescued and help also comes quickly for their severely malnourished companions, who are plucked from the mountain by helicopter over two days.
- Donkey grass -
The men relate the plane getting lost in the mountains and then clipping a ridge before barreling down a glacier and landing in a snow bank, killing 13 people, including the pilot and co-pilot, and injuring several others who died later.
They describe the scramble to survive at an altitude of nearly 4,000 meters, living in the fuselage and scrounging in the snow for roots and an herb nicknamed "donkey grass" after their food supplies ran out.
They also recount the deaths of several survivors in an avalanche.
"We are witnessing a miracle the likes of which the world has never seen," Cesar Charlone, Uruguay's charge d'affaires in Chile declares.
- Last Supper -
By December 24, rumors are swirling that the men resorted to cannibalism to avoid starving, which is confirmed two days later by the head of the Chilean rescue operation.
Chile's La Segunda newspaper cites an unnamed survivor as saying: "We took the terrible decision: in order to survive we would have to overcome all hurdles, whether religious or biological."
On December 29, the survivors issue a joint statement in Montevideo declaring that, after their food ran out: "We said to ourselves: if Jesus, during the Last Supper, shared his body and blood among the apostles, are we not to understand that we should do the same?"
The men, who are acclaimed as heroes, are absolved of any wrongdoing by the Catholic Church in Uruguay and Pope John Paul II and return to their daily lives.
Canessa became a cardiologist and in 2020 again helped save lives by building ventilators for Covid-19 patients.
"When I saw that around the world people were dying from a lack of air, it reminded me of the mountain, when I saw my friends who couldn't breathe anymore, and I said: No, this can't happen to me again," he told AFP.
'Alive': Uruguay plane crash survivors savor life 50 years on
Mariëtte Le Roux and Gabriela Vaz
Mon, 10 October 2022
The first night was the worst, Roy Harley recalls of the ten weeks he and other survivors of a plane crash 50 years ago managed to cling to life on an Andean glacier without food or shelter, and very little reason for hope.
Of the plane's 45 occupants, 16 made it home from the 72-day ordeal that became known as the "Miracle of the Andes."
The only way to survive was to eat the flesh of the dead. But for Harley, a retired engineer now aged 70, that was not the worst of the nightmare made famous by the 1993 film "Alive."
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 30 degrees Celsius (-22 Fahrenheit) at an altitude of some 3,500 meters.
Many of them not yet 20 -- the plane was flying an amateur Uruguayan rugby team and family members to a match in Chile -- none were dressed for the cold.
Several were badly injured.
Those who could squeezed into what remained of the fuselage between dead bodies and the screams of the wounded.
"That night, I experienced hell," Harley told AFP.
"At my feet was a boy who was missing a part of his face and... choking on blood.
"I didn't have the courage to reach out to him, to hold his hand, to comfort him. I was afraid. I was very afraid."
By morning, four more were dead, and so started a seemingly relentless torment that would eventually whittle the number of survivors down to 16.
- 'No words' -
There were too many dark moments to list.
"I don't have words to describe how cold it was," said Harley's former rugby teammate, fellow survivor and friend Carlos Paez, 68. "We were so cold, it was so difficult, that I have no words to describe it."
Many times they thought it was the end.
On Day 10, the survivors heard on the plane radio that the search for them had been called off.
"One of the most painful things was... to realize that the world was going on without us," said Paez, who today travels the world as a motivational speaker.
But it was also the jolt the survivors needed to take matters into their own hands and start trying to find a way off the glacier, he recalled.
Another tribulation was having to broach the topic of anthropophagy -- the eating of human flesh.
There was barely any food on the plane that was to have made a short flight from Mendoza in Argentina, where it had a stopover, to Santiago, Chile.
There was no sustenance to be found anywhere in the desolate, ice-covered landscape, and soon the survivors were starving.
A majority voted "yes" to eating their dead friends.
"We had tried to eat leather, we tried to eat cigarettes, we tried to eat toothpaste," Harley recalled at Paez's home in Montevideo.
"We were dying. When you have this choice: to die or to use the only thing you have... we did what we did in order to live."
On Day 16, disaster struck yet again.
An avalanche buried the mangled fuselage, the survivors' only shelter, as they slept.
Eight were killed, leaving only 19 of the original 32 crash survivors. Three more would die in the coming days.
"The avalanche was as if God had stabbed us in the back," said Paez.
- 'We are lucky' -
Displaying incredible ingenuity and tenacity, the survivors learnt, with no tools, to use plane debris to fashion bonnets, mittens, snow shoes, quilts and dark glasses against snow blindness.
They found a way to melt ice and snow for drinking water in spite of the sub-zero temperatures.
And finally, help did arrive.
In a last, desperate effort that almost cost them their lives, survivors Roberto Canessa and Fernando Parrado walked for 10 days into the unknown, hostile terrain, guided by nothing but instinct.
Finally, they came to a river and spotted men on horseback on the other side.
Over the noise of the water they could not make themselves heard, but the next day one of the men was back with a piece of paper wrapped around a stone that he threw to the pair.
On it, Parrado wrote a plea for help that started with the words: "I come from a plane that fell in the mountains."
The next day, the first helicopters came.
When he had boarded the ill-fated Uruguay Air Force plane for Chile, Harley weighed 84 kilograms. By the time he was rescued, there were a mere 37 kilograms on his 1.8-meter (5.9-foot) frame.
On average, the survivors lost 29 kilograms, according to Andes 1972 Museum records.
Harley and Paez insist they are not victims; their tale is one of resilience and teamwork.
"An extraordinary story starring ordinary people," said Paez.
"In the end, life triumphed."
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