30 years later, plane crash survivor recalls harrowing ordeal in the Andes

Ignore the title of Nando Parrado's new book, Miracle in the Andes. Anyone familiar with this plane-crash survival story?either from the original news accounts, Piers Paul Read's best-selling 1974 book Alive or the movie that dramatized it?knows that the experience illustrates the triumph of rationality, not the blessings of blind luck. The survivors simply outsmarted the elements that should have killed them all.

Here's what happened: On Oct. 12, 1972, a rugby team set off from Montevideo, Uruguay, to fly to Santiago, Chile, for a game. There were 45 people on the plane, including the crew, Parrado (who was a member of the team), his mother and his sister. The next day the plane crashed high in the Andes. Twenty-nine people survived the crash, but only 16 were still alive 72 days later when rescuers finally arrived.

Stranded without food, the survivors began eating their own dead. After a number of thwarted starts that led nowhere, Parrado and his friend, Roberto Canessa, finally were able to trudge across the high mountains and summon help?an ordeal that took 10 days. Thus, an experience that might have turned into a real-life Lord of the Flies became instead The Magnificent Sixteen.

Parrado was an adviser for the 1993 film Alive! so it is no surprise that his book describes essentially the same incidents as the movie. Where the book departs is in its plumbing of the author's mind as he comes to terms with his own severe injuries, the many deaths after the crash, the realization that no one is looking for the survivors and, always, the bone-chilling cold.

The precision with which Parrado remembers specific dates and details may strain one's belief, and the generosity of spirit he attributes to virtually everyone seems more after-the-fact than contemporaneous with the event. Even so, the tenacity and cooperation of the youth?most were between 19 and 21, Parrado was 23?were amply demonstrated by their survival.

Parrado, now 56, is a prominent TV producer and motivational speaker. To clear up some questions the book raised, BookPage contacted him in Montevideo, where he still lives.

Are all 16 who were rescued still alive?

Yes, they are all alive and very well indeed.

Were any lawsuits filed as a result of the crash?

No lawsuits were ever made against the Uruguayan Air Force [which owned the plane], the government or anybody else, [either] from the group or from an individual.

As an adviser to the movie "Alive!" were you satisfied with the way it turned out?

Yes. It was quite a big effort and the best movie that could be made according to the budget. [Director] Frank Marshall really got involved in the movie, and everything in it is 100 percent true.

Are you able to go for long periods without thinking about the crash?

Yes, sometimes for weeks. When something hard or difficult comes to me, then I remember?or when I look at my family. Then I'm really thankful that I am alive and able to enjoy them.

What were some of the survival elements it took you too long to learn?

How to fight the cold, how to use the snow as an ally and not as an enemy [and] that you should climb mountains through the ridges and not straight on.

What was there about your father that drew your thoughts so strongly to him during the ordeal?

We were very close, and I was always thinking how terrible he must be feeling having lost his family in one accident.

Your account of the experience is very detailed and specific. Did you keep any sort of records while your were on the mountain?

No. Some things are hard to forget!

Did you feel the way you thought you would when you returned to the crash site?

I returned to the site of the crash 11 times with my father to put flowers on the graves of my mother, sister and friends. It's an amazing landscape when you are in the company of a great guide and a well-organized expedition. [There's] maybe a sense of pride and accomplishment looking at those enormous mountains and having defeated them. [There's] also some sadness?but no grief or pain. Copyright 2006 BookPage Reviews.

In October 1972, Uruguayan rugby player Parrado awoke bewildered, freezing, and wracked with pain, finding himself stranded high in the Andes, one of numerous survivors of the crash of the airplane that had been carrying his rugby team to Chile. With little food or warm clothing, suffering from a head injury, and grieving the deaths of family members and friends, Parrado, with the other survivors, was plunged into a harrowing life-or-death struggle. Over 30 years later, he explains that he found the means to persevere through his deep love for his father, which enabled him to endure subzero temperatures, deadly avalanches, and the gruesome necessity of cannibalism. Contemplative yet unflinching, this thought-provoking work is both a gripping survival story and a sensitive examination of the sustaining power of religious faith, friendship, love, and family ties. More introspective than Piers Paul Read's journalistic account, Alive , published soon after the ordeal, Parrado presents both the jaw-dropping realities of the 16 survivors' story and the life-altering lessons he learned from the experience. With its universal themes of courage and determination and its broad appeal to true-adventure fans, this work is recommended for all public libraries.--Ingrid Levin, Florida Atlantic Univ., Jupiter

In October 1972, a plane carrying an Uruguayan rugby team crashed in the Andes. Not immediately rescued, the survivors turned to cannibalism to survive and after 72 days were saved. Rugby team member Parrado has written a beautiful story of friendship, tragedy and perseverance. High in the Andes, with a fractured skull, eating the flesh of his teammates and friends, Parrado calmly ponders the cruelties of fate, the power of the natural world and the possibility of continued existence. "I would live from moment to moment and from breath to breath, until I had used up all the life I had." Parrado, who for the past 10 years has been giving inspirational talks based on his experiences, lost his mother and sister in the crash. Struggling to stay alive, his guide becomes his beloved father: "each [stride] brought me closer to my father... each step I took was a step stolen back from death." More than a companion to the 1970s bestselling chronicle of the disaster, Alive , this is a fresh, gripping page-turner that will satisfy adventure readers, and a complex reflection on camaraderie, family and love. Photos. First serial in Outside. (May 9)

Adult/High School In 1972, Parrado and his rugby teammates from Uruguay were flying to Chile to play a match against the national team. Crossing the Andes, the aircraft crashed on a remote, high-altitude, glaciated slope. This remarkable story of the survivors omits none of the raw intensity and brutality of their experience but is burnished by time, casting an analytical perspective on ways in which their subsequent lives were influenced by the ordeal. The many forms of courage exhibited and the sustaining power of love of family are the basis of the narrative as the group supported one another in a collective refusal to surrender to the mountain. Parrado credits their physical conditioning and the rigorous team ethic inherent in the sport as the foundation for the trust and allegiance that enabled the men to battle the odds. Reduced to the most elemental human needs and learning from a radio transmission that rescue efforts had been abandoned, they reluctantly realized that their only food source was the bodies of the victims. Parrado was respectful of the spiritual faith of those who clung to a belief in rescue, but put his energy into engineering a plan and acted as a leader of the expeditionaries who hiked through the perilous mountains to find help. A detailed chronicle of these events was presented in Piers Paul Read's Alive (Avon, 1975), but Parrado's memoir offers a reflective expansion of that work. Dramatic photographs are included.Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA