Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571
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The Crash
On October 13, 1972 an Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop Fairchild FH-227D was flying over the Andes carrying the Stella Maris (Christian Brothers) school's "Old Christians" rugby team from Montevideo, Uruguay to play a match in Santiago, Chile. After a refuelling stop in Buenos Aires and an overnight stop in Mendoza due to inclement mountain weather, the flight over the Andes commenced. After a navigation error while the aircraft (which had a maximum altitude of only 6800 m) was shrouded in clouds, it started to descend while still over the mountains and crashed near the remote mountainous border between Chile and Argentina. The plane clipped a mountain peak at 4200m, neatly severing the left wing and the vertical stabilizer, leaving a gaping whole in the rear of the fuselage. The fuselage then slid, in pieces, down a steep mountain slope before finally coming to rest in a snow bank.
Survival
Of the 45 people on the plane, 27 survived the crash, but faced hard survival problems in the high freezing mountains. The group was dismayed to hear on the radio (which had belonged to one of the pilots and had survived the crash) that the rescue search had been called off. Many had injuries from the crash (mostly broken legs from the aircraft's seats piling together), and lacked equipment such as mountaineering sunglasses to prevent snowblindness, cold-weather clothing and footwear suitable for the area. Most gravely, they also lacked any kind of medical supplies, leaving the two freshman medical students onboard that had survived the crash to improvise splints and braces with salvaged parts of what remained of the aircraft. The survivors had a small amount of food and drink; a few chocolate bars, other assorted snacks, and several bottles of wine, which they shared during the following days in very small amounts so as not to exhaust their meager supply. Of course, they still ran out quickly, and on the barren, snow-covered peak they found themselves stranded upon, there was no natural vegetation and no animal population.
Cannibalism
The group survived for 72 days, partly by collectively making the decision to eat their dead comrades, although nine survivors were to die of their injuries, of exposure due to the cold and their untreated injuries, which rapidly turned gangrenous, or getting caught in a series of avalanches. The decision to cannibalize the deceased passengers was not taken lightly, as most were classmates or at least acquiantences, and some initially refused to partake (though, in desperation, the last refusers finally gave in a few days later). It was also decided that the corpses of survivors' relatives would be forsaken out of respect for the dead. These numbered about half a dozen.
Radio
The less injured among the group tried many excursions in many directions to find a way out of the mountains and search for rescue. Those excursions were carried out by two or three of the most healthy and strong survivors. They found the lost tail section of the plane about a kilometer away and tried to contact the anyone within range using a radio they found in the tail section, but the radio (which had been originally wired to the cockpit) was broken beyond their means of repair. A mechanic that survived the crash, Carlos Roque, mentioned that there was a backup battery stowed in the tail section, but when the explorers returned to the tail section, they were dismayed to discover that it was too heavy to carry. They tried bringing the cockpit's radio to the battery, but couldn't make it work. Thus their only communication with the outside world was the portable one-way transistor radio they'd found in one of the deceased pilots' carry-on bags. Roque died of his injuries a few days later.
Trekking For Rescue
On the December 13, 1972, 62 days after the crash, three of the fittest men (given the generally poor physical conditions of the group), Fernando Parrado, Roberto Canessa and Antonio Vizintín, decided that the only option was to try to climb out of the mountains to find help. They reckoned that Chile must lie to the west, based on where the sun set and the direction they were headed at the time of the crash. It took them ten days to reach civilisation and raise the alarm. On the third day, Parrado and Canessa sent Vizintín back to the crash site as they were rapidly running out of their grisly rations. It took him only about three hours to return, after the three-day climb in the other direction. Ten days after leaving the crash site, Parrado and Canessa reached the other side of the Andes in Chile, where they encountered a rancher by the name of Sergio Catalan, who gave them some bread and summoned the authorities. The following day, those remaining at the crash site heard on their radio that Parrado and Canessa had been successful in finding help. They tidied themselves up as best they could, covered the remains of the corpses that were no longer intact, and awaited their rescuers. That night, December 22, 1972, a helicoptor carrying Canessa and two alpinists arrived, took on half the survivors, and departed, leaving the alpinists at the crash site until the second helicoptor could arrive, although it didn't arrive until the following morning due to a blizzard over the peaks that night, leaving those left behind that night to once again sleep in the husk of the fuselage. The second helicoptor arrived at daybreak on December 23, And with that, the sixteen survivors were rescued after 72 days. All of them were taken to hospitals in Santiago and treated for altitude sickness, broken bones, scurvy, malnutrition and psychiatric counseling.
The Survivors
The sixteen survivors were Jose Pedro Algorta, Roberto Canessa, Alfredo Delgado, Daniel Fernández, Roberto Francois, Roy Harley, Jose Luis Inciarte, Alvaro Mangino, Javier Methol, Carlos Páez, Fernando Parrado, Ramán Sabella, Adolfo Strauch, Eduardo Strauch, Antonio Vizintín and Gustavo Zerbino. Parrado served as a technical adviser to Alive, the 1993 American film about the incident.
The Deceased
Those killed in the crash or of their injuries after the crash were Francisco Abal, Gaston Costemalle, Rafael Echavarren, Col. Julio César Ferradas (pilot), Alexis Hounié, Lt. Col. Dante Hector Lagurara (co-pilot), Guido Magri, Felipe Maquirriain, Lt. Ramon Martínez (navigator), Graziela Mariani, Julio Martínez-Lamas, Daniel Maspons, Juan Carlos Menéndez, Liliana Methol, Esther Nicola, Dr. Francisco Nicola, Gustavo Nicolich, Eugenia Parrado, Susana Parrado, Marcelo Perez, Enrique Platero, Cpl. Carlos Roque (flight mechanic), Daniel Shaw, Diego Storm, Numa Turcatti, Carlos Valeta and Fernando Vázquez. The corpses, either whole or whatever remained of them, were later buried under a pile of stones at the crash site, and commemorated by an iron cross protruding from its center. What remained of the fuselage was set afire and burned to the ground.
See Also
Alive-dvd_cover.jpg
- Clay Blair Jr., Survive!, (1973) New York: Berkley Publishing ISBN 0425033090
- Piers Paul Read, Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, (1974) ISBN 1885283083
- Alive: The Miracle of the Andes
External links
- Alive! The Andes Survivors (http://members.aol.com/PorkinsR6/alive.html)
- Supervivientes de los Andes (1976) (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0075290/) (Mexican film)
- Alive (1993) (http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0106246/) (American film)zh:1972年安第斯空難