In December 1972, news broke around the world that 72 days after a Uruguayan plane crashed in the Andes, 16 passengers had been found alive.
Although the story was christened ‘The Miracle of the Andes’ it soon became clear that the survivors had been forced to resort to desperate measures to stay alive.
A new film about their ordeal, Society Of The Snow, has already garnered a Golden Globe nomination and, as its release on Netflix nears, Jonathan Mayo tells the harrowing day-by-day story of determination, bravery and the stomach-churning reality of survival.
Thursday October 12, 1972
At Carrasco Airport in Uruguay, 45 passengers are assembling for a flight to Santiago in Chile.
The plane is an Uruguayan Air Force Fairchild F-227 chartered by the Old Christians amateur rugby team, all ex-pupils of Catholic schools in Uruguay aged between 18 and 26, to take them and friends and family to play an exhibition match in Chile.
As the air currents over the Andes are treacherous in the afternoon, the plane takes off early in the morning.
An hour into the flight, the co-pilot Lieutenant-Colonel Dante Lagurara announces that the weather is too hazardous and they will be landing in Mendoza, Argentina. The sports-mad players groan with disappointment at the loss of a day in Chile.
Friday October 13
In a cafe in Mendoza one member of the rugby team, medical student Roberto Canessa, asks the pilot Colonel Julio Cesar Ferradas when they are going to leave. He replies that he doesn’t know and so Roberto says: ‘Are you cowards or what?’
The pilot retorts angrily: ‘Do you want your parents to read in the papers that 45 Uruguayans are lost in the mountains?’
When the plane finally takes off at 2pm there are cheers but also jokes about the wisdom of flying on Friday the 13th.
At 3.30pm co-pilot Lagurara tells the passengers to fasten their seat belts as they are heading into turbulence.
The boys extinguish their cigarettes and stop throwing a rugby ball around the cabin as the plane plummets. Many start to pray. Suddenly, the right wing hits a mountain top and detaches, slicing off the tail section.
Five people fall out of the back of the plane. Roberto grips his seat so tightly he rips off the fabric.
What’s left of the plane toboggans down the snowy mountainside, until it comes to a sudden stop, forcing all the seats to concertina against the cockpit.
In a fuselage filled with bodies and wreckage, the survivors try to help the injured. That night they use cigarette lighters to see, hoping they don’t ignite the jet fuel.
Someone says to Roberto: ‘We’re doomed.’
Saturday October 14
Several passengers have died in the bitterly cold night, where temperatures plummet to -35C. Only 27 remain alive. The pilot has been killed and co-pilot Lagurara is trapped in the cockpit.
He begs the boys to give him his revolver so he can kill himself, but they refuse and instead try to use the radio to summon help, but it is broken. Lagurara dies soon after.
The survivors gather what supplies they have – bottles of wine, whisky and cherry brandy, nuts, dates, chocolate and jars of jam and start to ration them out.
Unbeknown to them, they are 11,500ft up and 80 miles from the nearest town.
The bodies of the dead, already stiff, are dragged out of the fuselage, others take suitcases and form a giant cross in the snow so they can be spotted from the air.
A wall is built inside the fuselage using the remaining luggage to protect them from the biting wind, despite the thin air making any exertion difficult. A glow-in-the-dark statue of the Virgin Mary brings comfort for some.
Sunday October 15
The survivors divide up duties – one group keep the fuselage habitable; another provides water. Eating snow only irritates their gums and causes tongues and throats to swell, so they make water by placing ice on aluminium taken from the seats and leaving it in the sun.
The third group, including Roberto, look after the wounded using T-shirts as bandages and perfume as disinfectant.
Roberto’s friend and teammate Nando Parrado, who had been unconscious for three days, and left for dead, comes round. Roberto breaks the news to him that his mother was killed in the crash and that his sister Susy is badly injured.
Nando said later: ‘I crawled to where my sister was and I embraced her on the floor. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t talk. She could only move her eyes.’ When he rubs her frostbitten feet the skin comes off.
The cross made of luggage doesn’t seem to be working so some boys use nail polish and lipstick to write SOS on the fuselage. The Chilean Aerial Rescue Service are searching for the plane, but in the wrong place.
Tuesday October 17
Before he died, the co-pilot told them that they had crashed on the western edge of the Andes, so Chile and civilisation should only be a couple of days’ walk away. Roberto and three others head west up a mountain to get help, using passenger seats tied to their feet as makeshift snowshoes, but after walking for only an hour and weak from lack of food, they turn back.
As they walk they discuss Nando’s comment the previous day that, if need be, he’d be prepared to eat one of the dead pilots, ‘After all, they got us into this mess.’
Saturday October 21
Nando’s sister Susy dies in his arms. He said later: ‘I learned that at those moments my brain didn’t react to anything that was outside survival. I couldn’t cry. I didn’t feel sorrow.’ Susy is buried outside in the snow. As he walked back to the fuselage, Nando is convinced that he too will die.
Meanwhile, in Santiago the Chilean Aerial Rescue Service announces that the search is being called off, ‘because of negative results’. The families of the plane’s passengers are distraught.
October 24
One of the boys, Roy Harley, has managed to get a transistor radio working, and hears the news that the rescue attempt has ended.
By now, the 27 survivors are starving and they hold a meeting to discuss what, just days before, would have been unthinkable: whether they should eat the dead.
Nando said later: ‘I didn’t have any doubts. I had arrived at the conclusion of my thoughts very clearly. This is the only way out. Not knowing when you’re going to eat again is the worst fear of a human being. The most primal fear.’
The majority decide that they will eat human flesh, but Liliana Methol, 35, who has become a mother figure for the survivors, says that as long as there is a chance of rescue she won’t, and her husband Javier agrees.
Roberto and three others go outside and use razor blades and shards of glass to cut away the clothes of a body protruding through the snow ‘whose face we could not bear to look at’. They lay small strips of flesh to dry on the roof of the plane. In his book, I Had To Survive, Roberto called it ‘the final goodbye to innocence’.
October 29
The survivors have now been on the mountainside for 17 days and are huddled in the fuselage to escape the bitter wind. Liliana, who has grown so weak she has decided to eat the meat, is discussing with Nando why God has let this disaster befall them.
They are so close, Nando can feel Liliana’s warm breath on his cheek, which he finds comforting.
The plane suddenly vibrates and Roy jumps up moments before an avalanche covers the plane and fills the fuselage with tons of snow. As he was the only person standing up, Roy has his head above the deluge.
He manages to dig out three others and they then frantically try to rescue those whose hands they can see reaching out above the snow. Javier Methol calls out: ‘Liliana! Hold on – I’ll get you!’ But his wife is one of eight who suffocate.
October 30
After a day trapped under the avalanche, the remaining boys dig their way through the plane towards the cockpit using shards of metal and broken pieces of plastic. Roy stands on the dead pilot and kicks out the windscreen.
It displaces the layer of snow outside covering the cockpit and they finally feel the air. But a blizzard is raging so they have little choice but to stay put and use the time to plan an escape from the mountainside.
Exploratory treks, barely lasting a few hours, have so far proved unsuccessful. There seems to be nothing west, so it is decided that a small group should venture east when the weather improves.
Someone remembers that summer reaches the Andes on November 15 like clockwork. Nando is desperate to be part of the rescue party because he wants to leave before his dead mother and sister become food for the others. He agrees to wait until the 15th.
October 31
The survivors in the snow-filled fuselage are wet, cold and hungry and, without blankets, they huddle together for warmth. It was in Roberto’s words ‘a damp prison’ and the bleakest day of their ordeal so far.
They reluctantly decide to eat the bodies of those around them who died in the avalanche. The meat is wet and raw and some refuse outright to eat it.
Nando forces himself to eat and wrote later, ‘What have we done to deserve such misery?’ He distracts himself by thinking of his home and family.
November 1
The blizzard finally ends and so they start clearing the fuselage of snow, a gruelling task that will take them a week. It is decided that an escape team will consist of Nando, Roberto, Antonio ‘Tintin’ Vizintin and Numa Turcatti.
They build a sledge out of a large plastic suitcase and stock it with supplies of meat – human flesh – water and a sleeping bag made from the plane’s insulation, and wait for the weather to improve.
November 17
At 8am, after 36 days on the mountain and 48 hours later than planned because of poor weather, the expedition sets out. Numa is too weak, so only Nando, Roberto and Tintin leave the camp, heading east towards Argentina knowing full well that this is a do-or-die mission.
To their surprise, about a mile from the fuselage, they stumble across the Fairchild’s tail section lying upright in the snow and it proves to be a treasure trove.
They find jumpers, socks and trousers, and Roberto even recovers his own luggage, which still smells of his home. ‘It was like stumbling across the person I used to be.’
Other valuable finds include chocolate, rum and large batteries to power the cockpit radio. They make a fire from comic books and spend the night in the tail section in a deep sleep.
November 21
After four nights in the tail section, Nando, Roberto and Tintin decide to head back to the rest of the group as they have concluded there is no safe route east and their sleeping bag is not warm enough to allow them to sleep in the open.
Roberto leaves a message in nail polish on a mirror in the galley for any rescuers, ‘Go up. Eighteen people still alive.’
The batteries are too heavy to carry but they can bring clothing for everyone as well as 30 cartons of cigarettes. Upon reaching the fuselage they discover that another teammate has died, the second to perish from gangrene that month.
Roberto encourages them by saying that if they can get the pilots’ radio out of the cockpit and take it to the batteries in the tail section, they might be able to summon help.
November 29
For three days Roy, Tintin, Nando and Roberto have been working inside the tail section attempting to connect the batteries to the cockpit radio which they had carefully removed from the Fairchild’s instrument panel which had been embedded in the pilot’s chest.
The snow has melted around the tail leaving it on a pedestal of ice, making it very unstable, but it is a clear sign that the weather is now changing for the better.
Roy has brought his transistor radio and when he connects it to a makeshift antenna the tail section fills with music.
A news bulletin announces that the Uruguayan Air Force is sending a plane to resume the search. Roberto arranges suitcases in the shape of a large cross so the tail section can be seen from the air.
Meanwhile, back at the fuselage, the others are running short of food so decide to eat body parts that they had so far left untouched, including intestines and brains.
November 30
Roy, Tintin, Nando and Roberto return to the fuselage. Roberto looks at the carcasses and skulls lying in the snow and reckons that they need to tidy the camp before they are rescued.
They have brought with them a life-saving discovery – insulating fabric from the tail section’s heating system, which will make a much more efficient sleeping bag.
As Tintin tells them: ‘This is going to allow us to spend a night outside,’ meaning that an expedition party can now journey for days, surely enough time for them to find help.
Labouring under the co-pilot’s assertion that civilisation is only a couple of days’ walk away, they start to draw up plans for a last-ditch escape west to Chile.
Nando, who is still desperate to leave and unconvinced a plane will spot them, said in his book, Miracle In The Andes, that he knew that as soon as he stepped out of the fuselage, he wasn’t coming back. ‘This is a kamikaze expedition.’
December 12
Today is their 61st day in the Andes. The escape party consisting of Roberto, Tintin and Nando say their farewells to the 13 staying behind. Numa, who had been a member of the first escape attempt, had died the day before.
Nando imagines him taking his place alongside the ghosts of the 29 who have died. He says to teammate Carlitos Rodriguez: ‘If you run out of food, I want you to use my mother and Susy.’
Carlitos is silent and then says: ‘Only as a last resort.’
December 14
The three are making slow but steady progress through the mountains. Each night they huddle together in the sleeping bag which keeps them warm and dry.
They also have with them ‘meat’ wrapped in socks, a compass and $600 as a bribe for anyone they encounter who may be hostile.
Each man has multiple layers of clothing to keep warm; Nando is wearing Liliana’s woollen slacks, which fit him easily as he has lost so much weight.
When they reach the summit of a 17,000ft mountain, they see dozens more peaks around them and realise to their horror the co-pilot was dreadfully wrong. Roberto thinks, ‘We’re dead.’
Nando sees what he thinks may be a pass through the terrain, but Tintin is too exhausted to hike any further and decides to turn back. Using the suitcase sled to travel downhill, Tintin is back in the camp in an hour.
December 20
On the ninth day of their trek, and the 69th since the crash, Nando and Roberto wake up covered in bed-bug bites. Roberto says it is a good sign as it shows they must be near civilisation.
Both are exhausted after covering nearly 40 miles in just ten days and Roberto, who can barely walk, is close to giving up. His skin has a green tinge and he believes it is only a matter of time before his organs start to shut down.
Later that afternoon they walk through a herd of cows and Roberto spots a figure on the other side of a river.
‘Nando! I see a man! A man on a horse!’ For a few minutes they lose sight of the stranger, but then they hear a shout over the roar of the river.
Nando mimics the movements of an airplane and they both shout desperately: ‘Help us!’ The man, a shepherd named Sergio Catalan, is shouting back, but the only word they catch is: ‘Tomorrow!’
December 21
Before dawn, Nando and Roberto can see that Sergio has lit a large bonfire on the other side of the river by which three men are sitting.
One of the men writes a note on a piece of paper, ties it and a pencil to a rock and throws it over the river towards Nando. It says: ‘I’ve sent a man on his way over to you. Tell me what you want.’
Nando scribbles on the other side that they are survivors of a plane crash and have been walking for ten days. ‘We have no food, we’re weak. When are they coming for us? Please, we can’t even walk. Where are we?’
On the back, using his mother’s lipstick, he adds: ‘When will you come?’ Nando throws the rock back and the man reads the note, gestures that he understands and then pulls some bread from his pocket and throws that to Nando.
He walks back to Roberto and shows him the bread. Roberto says simply: ‘We’re saved.’
Aftermath
The following day, helicopters guided by Nando, reached the 14 survivors at the fuselage. The world soon discovered that they had stayed alive by eating their fellow passengers.
The Catholic Church announced that they had committed no sin and to the relief of the survivors, many of the families of those who died expressed public support for what they were forced to do.
Shortly after the rescue, a grave was built at the site and the fuselage was doused in petrol and set alight.
Every year, on December 22, the survivors meet to mark the anniversary of their rescue. Nando says: ‘Every time I breathe, it’s like a miracle. I shouldn’t be here.’
- Jonathan Mayo is the author of The Assassination Of JFK: Minute By Minute, published by Short Books at £10.99.
James Parker is a UK-based entertainment aficionado who delves into the glitz and glamour of the entertainment industry. From Hollywood to the West End, he offers readers an insider’s perspective on the world of movies, music, and pop culture.
