On Friday, October 13, 1972, a plane with 45 people on board, including members of a Uruguayan university rugby team, crashed in the Andes, marking the beginning of an incredible story of survival. For 72 days, the survivors were exposed to a hostile environment at an altitude of 3,600 meters, forcing them to feed on the bodies of the deceased. Here are seven notable moments that inspired the film The circle of snowavailable on Netflix.
The swarm
After a one-day stopover, the plane takes off from Mendoza, Argentina. Rugby players and their families must travel to Santiago, Chile to play a game.
An hour into the flight, which was supposed to last 90 minutes, the pilots made a catastrophic mistake. You sink into the Andes and begin the descent to land. While trying to regain altitude, the plane's belly and right wing hit a ridge. The tail separated and the plane rolled a kilometer down the mountain, sucking some people out of the plane.
When the passenger compartment suddenly stops in a valley, seats are torn off and thrown forward, crushing several passengers. There are only 33 left alive.
After the crash, survivors, including two medical students, began treating the injured and setting up the fuselage as a shelter. The group, made up mostly of young people in their 20s, is in the heart of the Andes, where temperatures can reach -25°C.
We later learned that the plane had fallen several hundred meters twice before the crash due to air pockets.
The first night
For many, the first night on the mountain was “the most terrible”.
“Soon it was night and it was the longest, coldest and saddest night of my life. It was like the descriptions of Dante's Inferno: one scream after another, a hellish cold that invaded from all sides as we had nothing to hide. Some passengers who we couldn't get completely out of their seats had to cling to their seats while sleeping and unfortunately several of them died the next morning,” 20-year-old Coco Nicolich wrote in a letter to his family.
In an interview with AFP in 2022, one of his teammates, Roy Harley, also recounted a terrible night.
“I went through hell that night. At my feet lay a boy with part of his face missing and choking on his own blood. I didn't have the courage to approach him, hold his hand, comfort him. I was scared. I was very shocked.”
By the next morning, four more people had died, bringing the number of survivors to 29.
AFP
Photo of the cross on the grave of the victims of the 1972 Andean air disaster (Mariana SUAREZ / AFP)
Day 9 – “Today we started cutting up the dead to eat them”
Initially, the group survived by melting the snow for drinking and rationing the few foods they salvaged from the rubble: cookies, chocolate and canned seafood. However, the food quickly ran out. One survivor described eating a chocolate-covered nut for three days.
On the ninth day, the two medical students discuss the only source of protein available to them: the bodies of the deceased. After many prayers and hours of debate, the two students are the first to indulge in cannibalism, the act of feeding on the bodies of the dead in order to survive.
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Day 10 – Stop the search
One day, two planes each flew over the crash area twice. The young men are convinced that they will soon be rescued. Thanks to a radio found in the rubble, they can also follow the progress of the search. But on the tenth day comes the shock: they learn that they are believed to be dead and the mission to find them has been abandoned.
Day 16 – The Avalanche
Six days later, an avalanche buried the plane's fuselage while several of them slept there. A team member who got up after hearing the rumble of snow managed to save some of them. Nevertheless, the avalanche claimed eight lives. Due to a snowstorm, most of the group is stuck in the snow for four days, next to the remains of their friends. There are only 21 survivors.
Day 61 – The Last Chance Expedition
The young men know their only chance of survival is to rejoin civilization. They cling to the fact that the pilot had told them before his death that the green plains of Chile lay on the other side of the mountains that held them captive. Although an earlier expedition had failed, three comrades were chosen to set out in search of help.
On the 61st day, after much preparation, they set off to the top of the mountain, which culminates at an altitude of 4600 meters. Experts say that at this altitude you should not climb more than 300 meters per day in order to acclimatize. The climb takes three days and is punctuated by freezing cold nights. The climbers slip into a huge sleeping bag that they have sewn for the occasion.
Once you reach the top, the joy evaporates. The pilot was wrong: as far as the eye can see there are only snow-covered peaks. Two of them still decide to continue their journey, despite the death that awaits them.
AgenceQMI
Survivors salute the helicopter that came to their rescue, December 22, 1972.
Day 72 – The Miracle
After struggling to survive for days, the duo notices that the landscape is becoming softer. They find a river and signs of human life. Then the long-awaited miracle happens: you see a man on horseback on the other side of the watercourse. In this final effort, the duo is said to have covered almost 60 kilometers in ten days.
When the helicopters arrive, one of the two survivors, who had memorized the mountain ridges and valleys he had traveled through, leads the rescuers to his companions. After 72 days, her ordeal is over.
− With information from the Guardian, France 24, the BBC, the Chron and the History Channel.