Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors Read online

  Eugenia Parrado looked up from her book. There was nothing to be seen from the window but the white mist of cloud. She turned the other way and looked at Susana’s face and took hold of her hand. Behind them Nando Parrado and Panchito Abal were engrossed in conversation. Parrado had not even fastened his seat belt, nor did he do so when the plane hit a second air pocket and sank like a stone for a further few hundred feet. A cry of ‘Olé, olé, olé!’ went up from the boys in the cabin – those, that is, who could not see out of a window – for the second fall had brought the plane out of the clouds, and the view which opened up beneath them was not of the fertile central valley of Chile many thousands of feet below but of the rocky edge of a snow-covered mountain no more than ten feet from the tip of the wing.

  ‘Is it normal to fly so close?’ one boy asked another.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ his companion replied.

  Several passengers started to pray. Others braced themselves against the seats in front of them, waiting for the impact of the crash. There was a roar of the engines and the plane vibrated as the Fairchild tried to climb again; it rose a little but then there came a deafening crash as the right wing hit the side of the mountain. Immediately it broke off, somersaulted over the fuselage, and cut off the tail. Out into the icy air fell the steward, the navigator, and their pack of cards, followed by three of the boys still strapped to their seats. A moment later the left wing broke away and a blade of the propeller ripped into the fuselage before falling to the ground.

  Inside what remained of the fuselage there were screams of terror and cries for help. Without either wings or tail, the plane hurtled towards the jagged mountain, but instead of being smashed to pieces against a wall of rock it landed on its belly in a steep valley and slid like a toboggan on the sloping surface of deep snow.

  The speed at which it hit the ground was around 200 knots, yet it did not disintegrate. Two more boys were sucked out of the back of the plane; the rest remained in the fuselage as it careered down the mountain, but the force of deceleration caused the seats to break loose from their mountings and move forward, crushing the bodies of those caught between them and smashing the partition which separated the passenger cabin from the forward luggage area. While the freezing air of the Andes rushed into the decompressed cabin and those passengers who still had their wits about them waited for the impact of the fuselage against the rock, it was the metal and plastic of the seats which injured them. Realizing this, some of the boys tried to undo their safety belts and stand up in the aisle, but only Gustavo Zerbino succeeded. He stood with his feet planted firmly on the floor and his hands pressed against the ceiling, shouting, ‘Jesus, Jesus, little Jesus, help us, help us!’

  Another of the boys, Carlitos Páez, was saying a Hail Mary, begun when the wing of the plane had first touched the mountain. As he mouthed the last words of this prayer, the plane came to a stop. There was a moment of stillness and silence. Then, slowly, from all over the tangled mess within the passenger cabin came the sounds of life – groans and prayers and cries for help.

  As the plane had hurtled down the valley, Canessa had braced himself for the impact, thinking that in a moment he would die. He did not pray but calculated in his mind the speed of the plane and the force with which it would hit the rock. Then suddenly he was conscious that the plane was no longer moving.

  He shouted, ‘It’s stopped!’ and then turned to the boy who sat beside him and asked him if he were all right. The boy was in a state of shock. He nodded and Canessa left him to help his friend Daniel Maspons extricate himself from his seat. Then the two of them started to help others. At first they thought that they were the only two who were not injured, for all around them they could hear cries for help, but others began to emerge from the wreckage. First came Gustavo Zerbino, then the team captain, Marcelo Pérez. Pérez had a bruised face and a pain in his side, but as captain of the team he immediately took it upon himself to organize the rescue of those trapped in the wreckage, while the medical students, Canessa and Zerbino, did what they could for the injured.

  Immediately after the plane had stopped, some of the younger boys, smelling the petrol fumes and fearing that the plane might explode or catch fire, had jumped out the gaping hole at the back. They found themselves up to their thighs in snow. Bobby Francois, the first to leave the plane, climbed onto a suitcase and lit a cigarette. ‘We’ve had it,’ he said to Carlitos Páez, who had followed him out into the snow.

  The scene was one of the utmost desolation. All around them was snow and beyond, on three sides, the sheer grey walls of the mountains. The plane had come to a halt on a slight tilt, facing down the valley where the mountains were much farther away and now partly obscured by grey clouds. It was bitterly cold, and many of the boys were in their shirt sleeves. Some wore sports coats and others blazers. None was dressed for subzero temperatures, and few suitcases could be seen which might provide extra clothes.

  As they looked back up the mountain for their lost luggage, this group of younger boys saw a figure staggering down the mountainside. As it drew nearer, they recognized one of their friends, Carlos Valeta, and shouted to him, calling him to come in their direction. Valeta seemed unable to see or hear them. At each step he sank up to his thighs in the snow, and only the steepness of the hill enabled him to make any progress at all. The boys could see that his course would not lead him to the plane, so they shouted yet more frantically to attract his attention. Two, Páez and Storm, even tried to go out to meet him, but it was impossible to walk in the snow, particularly uphill. They were trapped and could only watch helplessly as Valeta stumbled down into the valley. For a moment it seemed as if he might have heard them and was changing direction towards the plane, but then he slipped. His wide stride became a tumble, and his body slithered helplessly down the side of the mountain until he finally disappeared in the snow.

  Inside the plane, the handful of boys who were able tried to prise away the seats which trapped so many of the wounded. In the thin air of the mountains it took double the energy and effort, and those who had suffered only superficial injuries were still in a state of shock.

  Even when the wounded were pulled clear, there was little that anyone could do. The training of the two ‘doctors’, Canessa and Zerbino (the third medical student, Diego Storm, was in a state of shock), was pitifully inadequate. Of Zerbino’s first year at medical school, six months had been dedicated to compulsory classes in psychology and sociology. Canessa had done two years, but even so this was only a quarter of the total course. All the same, both were aware of the special responsibility which their training conferred upon them.

  Canessa knelt down to examine the crushed body of a woman, which at first he could not recognize. It was Eugenia Parrado, and she was dead. Beside her lay Susana Parrado, who was alive but semiconscious and seriously injured. Blood poured out of a gash in her forehead and blinded one eye. Canessa wiped away the blood, so that she could see, and then laid her down on the small part of the floor that was not cluttered with seats.

  Near her was Abal. He too was severely injured, with an open wound in his scalp. He was semiconscious and, as Canessa knelt to treat him as best he could, Abal took hold of his hand, saying, ‘Please don’t leave me, old man, please don’t leave me.’ There were so many others crying for help that Canessa could not stay with him. He called to Zerbino to tend to Abal and moved on to Parrado, who had been thrown out of his seat and lay senseless at the front of the plane. His face was covered with bruises and blood and Canessa thought that he was dead. He knelt and felt for a pulse; a faint beating of the heart registered on his fingertips. Parrado was still alive, but it seemed impossible that he could live for long, and since nothing could be done to help him he was given up for dead.

  Besides Eugenia Parrado, only two other passengers in the fuselage had died instantly. These were Dr and Señora Nicola. Both had been flung forward into the luggage compartment side by side and had died at once.

  For the time bei
ng their bodies were left where they were, and the two medical students returned to do what they could for the living. They made bandages of the antimacassars from the backs of the seats, but for many of the injuries these were quite inadequate. One boy, Rafael Echavarren, had had the calf of his right leg torn off and twisted around to cover the shin. The bone was entirely exposed. Zerbino took hold of the bleeding muscle, pulled it around to its proper place, and then bound up his leg with a white shirt.

  Another boy – Enrique Platero – came up to Zerbino with a steel tube sticking into his stomach. Zerbino was appalled, but he remembered from his lessons in medical psychology that a good doctor always instils confidence into his patient. He therefore looked Platero straight in the eye and, with as much conviction as he could put into his tone of voice, said, ‘Well, Enrique, you look all right.’

  ‘Do you think so?’ said Platero, pointing to the piece of steel in his stomach. ‘And what about this?’

  ‘Don’t worry about that,’ said Zerbino. ‘You’re perfectly strong, so come and give me a hand with these seats.’

  Platero seemed to accept this. He turned towards the seats and, as he did so, Zerbino grabbed hold of the tube, put his knee against Platero’s body, and pulled. The piece of steel came out, and with it came almost six inches of what Zerbino took to be Platero’s intestine.

  Platero, his attention once more upon his stomach, contemplated his projecting innards with some dismay, but before he had time to complain, Zerbino said to him, ‘Now look here, Enrique, you may think you’re in a bad way, but there are plenty of others much worse off than you are, so don’t be a coward, and just come and help. Tie that up with a shirt, and I’ll see to it later.’

  Without complaint Platero did as Zerbino had told him.

  Canessa, meanwhile, had returned to Fernando Vázquez, the boy who had been sitting beside him. The leg Canessa had thought was merely broken had, in fact, been cut in two by the plane’s propeller as it ripped into the fuselage. Blood had poured out of the severed artery. Now Vázquez was dead.

  Many of the other boys had been injured in the legs as the seats buckled up and pressed together. One had his leg broken in three different places, was severely wounded in the chest, and was now unconscious. It was those who were conscious who suffered – Panchito Abal, Susana Parrado, and, worst of all, the middle-aged lady whom none of them knew, Señora Mariani. She was trapped by her two broken legs under a pile of seats, and the boys were unable to extricate her. She screamed and begged for help, but it was beyond their strength to lift the seats which held her down.

  The face of Liliana Methol, the fifth woman in the plane, was badly bruised and covered with blood, but all her injuries were superficial. Her husband, Javier, cousin of Panchito Abal, was unhurt, but altitude sickness had come over him with the virulence of influenza. Though he made feeble attempts to help the wounded, he felt such dizziness and nausea that he was barely able to move. Others, though not afflicted with the same symptoms, suffered from the shock of the accident. One boy, Pedro Algorta, had total amnesia. He was physically well enough to work hard at moving the seats, but he had no idea where he was or what he was doing. Another had also been hit on the head and made repeated efforts to leave the plane and walk down the mountain.

  The plane had crashed at about half past three in the afternoon. Because of the clouds the light was already sombre, and about four o’clock it began to snow. The few flakes which fell at first grew into a flurry and then fell thickly, obliterating the view of the mountains. In spite of the snow, Marcelo Pérez directed that the wounded should be carried out so that those who were fit could clear the tangled seats from the floor of the Fairchild. This was intended as a temporary measure: they all felt sure that by now the plane would have been reported missing and help would be on the way.

  They realized that the rescue might be made easier if they could transmit signals from the radio. The entrance to the pilots’ cabin was blocked by the wall of seats which had piled up at the top of the passenger compartment, but sounds of life could be heard from the other side, so one of the calmer boys, Moncho Sabella, decided to try to reach the pilots from the outside.

  It was almost impossible to walk on the snow, but he discovered that he could use seat cushions as stepping-stones to the front of the plane. The nose had been crushed by the descent, but it was not difficult to climb up and look into the cockpit through the door to the front luggage compartment.

  There he discovered that Ferradas and Lagurara were trapped in their seats, with the instruments of the aeroplane embedded in their chests. Ferradas was dead, but Lagurara was alive and conscious and, seeing Sabella beside him, begged him to help. There was little Sabella could do. He could not move Lagurara’s body, but in answer to his plea for water he crammed some snow into a handkerchief and held it to his mouth. After that he tried to make the radio work but it was completely dead; when he returned to the others, however, to keep up their morale he told them he had spoken to Santiago.

  Later, Canessa and Zerbino retraced Sabella’s steps to the pilots’ cabin. They tried to push the instrument panel off Lagurara, but it was impossible to move it even half an inch. His seat was also fixed immovably in position. All they were able to do was remove the cushion at the back and thereby relieve some of the pressure on his chest.

  As they struggled in this futile attempt to free him, Lagurara said over and over again, ‘We passed Curicó, we passed Curicó.’ Then, seeing that nothing could be done, he asked the two boys to fetch the revolver which he kept in his bag. The bag was nowhere to be seen, nor would Canessa and Zerbino have given him the gun if they had found it, because, as Catholics, they could not condone suicide. They asked him instead if they could use the radio to bring help and set the dial as Lagurara instructed, but the transmitter was dead.

  Lagurara continued to beg for his revolver and then asked for water. Canessa climbed out of the cockpit and brought in some snow which he fed into Lagurara’s mouth, but the man’s thirst was pathological and insatiable. He was bleeding through the nose, and Canessa knew that he would not live for long.

  The two ‘doctors’ made their way back over the seat cushions to the rear of the plane and returned to the dark, narrow tunnel of moaning, screaming humanity. Those who had been extracted from the wreckage lay out on the snow, as the few who were fit and strong worked desperately to drag out those seats they could prise loose and clear some space on the floor of the plane. But the daylight was fading. By six it was almost dark and the temperature had sunk far below freezing. It was clear that rescue would not come that day, and so the wounded were brought back into the plane and the thirty-two survivors prepared for the night.

  5

  There was little space in which anyone could stand, let alone lie down. The break at the back of the fuselage was jagged, leaving seven windows on the left-hand side of the plane but only four to the right. The distance from the pilots’ cabin to the gaping hole at the rear measured only twenty feet, and most of this space was taken up by the knotted tangle of seats. The only floor space they had been able to clear before dark was by the entrance, and it was here that they laid the most seriously wounded, including Susana and Nando Parrado and Panchito Abal. In this position they were able to lie almost horizontally, but they had little protection against the snow and the bitter wind that blew in from the darkness. Marcelo Pérez, with the help of a hefty wing forward named Roy Harley, had done his best to build a barrier against the cold with anything that came to hand – especially the seats and suitcases – but the wind was strong and their wall kept falling down.

  Pérez, Harley, and a group of uninjured boys remained in a huddle near the wounded by the entrance, drinking the wine which the pilots had bought in Mendoza and doing what they could to keep up their makeshift barrier. The rest of the survivors slept where they could among the seats and bodies. As many as possible, including Liliana Methol, moved into the confined space of the luggage compartment, which lay betwee
n the passenger cabin and the cockpit. It was cramped and uncomfortable but by far the warmest place in the plane. There, too, they passed around the large bottles of Mendoza wine. Some of the boys were still dressed in short-sleeved shirts, and they gulped down litre after litre to bring some warmth to their bodies. They also pummelled and massaged one another. This seemed the only way to keep warm, until Canessa had the first of his ingenious ideas. He found, by examining the cushions and seats which lay all around them, that the upholstery, which was turquoise and made of brushed nylon, was only held to the seats by a type of zipper. It was quite simple to remove the coverings and, once removed, these made small blankets. They were pitifully inadequate protection against subzero temperatures, but they were certainly better than nothing.

  Worse than the cold that night was the atmosphere of panic and hysteria in the cramped cabin of the Fairchild. Everyone thought that his injury was the worst and complained out loud to the others. One boy who had broken his leg screamed at anyone who came near him. He said that they were hurting his leg and cursed them for it, but when he himself wanted to go to the entrance to scoop up some snow to quench his thirst, he could clamber over others with complete disregard for their injuries. Marcelo Pérez did what he could to calm him. He also tried to cope with Roy Harley, who became hysterical every time part of their wall fell down.

  All the time there came from the dark the moans, screams, and delirious raving of the wounded. In the luggage compartment they could still hear cries and groans from Lagurara; ‘We passed Curicó,’ he would say, ‘we passed Curicó.’ He would moan for water and beg for his gun.

  Inside the cabin itself the worst cries came from Señora Mariani, still trapped by her broken legs beneath the seats. At one time an attempt was made to free her, but it was impossible. As they worked, her cries became shriller still, and she swore that if they moved her she would die. They gave up the attempt. Two boys, Rafael Echavarren and Moncho Sabella, took hold of her hand in an attempt to comfort her, and to some extent they succeeded, but later the shrieks continued.