Plane Crash Survivor Recalls Turning Into A Cannibal, Eating Friends, While Waiting For Rescue
As they waited to be rescued, a plane crash victim described having to eat his friends (becoming a cannibal).
It’s been almost 49 years since the last of a Uruguayan rugby team’s survivors were rescued after their plane crashed into the Andes.
Touchaheart Nigeria reports that a charter plane carrying the Old Christians Club rugby union team across the Andes highlands crashed on October 13, 1972, killing 29 of the 45 people aboard.
Three crew members and eight passengers perished instantaneously or shortly after the jet collided with the ground.
The survivors were rescued on December 23, 1972, after another 18 people died over the next 72 days.
While waiting to be rescued, the survivors, the most of whom lived near the sea in Uruguay’s capital Montevideo and had never seen snow before, battled freezing weather at night, with temperatures as low as -30 degrees Celsius.
Medical supplies, suitable clothing for the frigid weather, and equipment or food were all lacking.
Survivor, Nando Parrado added: “We were starving in earnest, with no hope of finding food, but our hunger soon grew so voracious that we searched anyway.
Nando Parrado
“Again and again, we scoured the fuselage in search of crumbs and morsels. We tried to eat strips of leather torn from pieces of luggage, though we knew that the chemicals they’d been treated with would do us more harm than good.
“We ripped open seat cushions hoping to find straw but found only inedible upholstery foam.
“Again and again, I came to the same conclusion: unless we wanted to eat the clothes we were wearing, there was nothing here but aluminium, plastic, ice, and rock.”
Survivor, Jose Luis ‘Coche’ Inciarte recalled the heart-wrenching decision to eat the flesh of his dead friends, as he said “there was no other option if you wanted to stay alive”.
Jose Luis Inciarte
He said: “We made a meeting between all and we argued whether to do it or not to do it, not to do it seemed to mean to die, everybody decided to eat.
“When you went to take a piece of flesh, the body of your friend, their frozen body, the hand doesn’t obey and you have to make a great effort of energy and mind to make your arm obey, and then it obeys, not immediately.
“It was the same with opening mouth to put it inside the mouth and swallow.”
Sixty days after the crash, the three strongest were chosen to trek across the mountains in a desperate bid to find help.
Survivors Roberto Canessa, Nando Parrado and Antonio Vizintin trekked for 10 days across the vast mountain range when it became apparent no one was coming to look for them.
The trio set off without any mountaineering gear and only three days worth of supplies on December 12.
The group knew they had to climb their way to safety and over 10 days they climbed about 38 miles.
This forced them to send Vizintin back to the crash site because they were running out of supplies.
Parrado supposedly told his friend Canessa: “We may be walking to our deaths, but I would rather walk to meet my death than wait for it to come to me.”
After walking for several more days, the exhausted pair finally came across more and more signs of human presence, before coming across some Chilean farmers, who helped them and the 14 others waiting at the wreckage.
On Thursday, Dec. 23, 2021, it will be exactly 49 years since the survivors were rescued.
