Today a chartered aircraft carrying a Uruguayan rugby team has been found 72 days after it went down in the Andes. All of the passengers were given up for dead. Two survivors of the crash stumbled into a small town in Chile yesterday.
This morning, a helicopter has been sent to recover another 14 survivors still in the mountains. It has already been labeled one of the most incredible survival stories in recent times. It will be forever known as the miracle in the Andes. My name is Gustavo Zabino. I played across the back line for the Old Christians Rugby Club.
My name is Nando Prado. I played as a lock for the old Christians rugby club. My name is Antonio Vizintin.
I was a prop for the old Christians rugby club. I'm a survivor of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. I'm a survivor of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. I'm a survivor of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. The Old Christians Rugby Club are one of the biggest rugby union teams in Uruguay. With 18 league titles, they've clinched more domestic trophies than all but one team in the country, and they've had several players represent the national team. Founded in 1962, the old Christians had twice won the national championship by the end of their first decade. The club was pretty new when I played.
We were always battling at the top, either first or second in the championship. At that time in my life, the priorities were rugby, rugby, education and family, in that order of importance. 45 years ago, the old Christians chartered a plane to take them from Carrasco Airport in the Uruguayan capital of Montevideo to Santiago in Chile for an exhibition match.
They invited their family members and friends to join them on the trip. Expectations were high. I'd never been to Chile or even seen snow.
En route to the airport, we joked about travelling on the unluckiest day of the year, Friday the 13th. But we boarded the plane and forgot about it. Due to bad weather, the plane had to make a stop in Argentina.
However, when the team restarted their journey, the conditions had hardly improved. The journey became rough, with lots of turbulence. The plane was shaking up and down, a lot. It wasn't fun.
I got very frightened. especially when the plane suddenly dropped from a height due to the strong winds. The pilot had to speed up to avoid crashing against the summit of the mountain. We realised the situation wasn't positive at all. I couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing.
The engines were making very loud noises too, and then the crash. I remember the impact itself, the noise of the open air, the sensation of the plane falling from the sky. The last thing I remember is the sound of the metal hitting the mountain.
After that, there was just darkness. I thought I was dead. It was pure desperation.
There were people trapped inside the crushed seats. Initially you think, I'm alive, but then you need to escape. I'd studied medicine for three months at college, and I started figuring out who was alive and who was dead. Roberto and I began treating as many people as we could.
They cut open my jacket, and it was very heavy with blood. It looked as though I had a piece of liver growing on my elbow, but it was all clotted blood. I could have died. In the harsh conditions in which they found themselves, medical students Gustavo Zerbino and Roberto Canessa attempted to treat the injured passengers.
The other survivors cleared the fuselage of dead bodies and barricaded the opening with bags to insulate it. I don't remember anything from the first four days. I was in a coma, just darkness.
I could have died and I wouldn't have known. Initially given up for dead, Nando regained consciousness in the Andes a few days after the crash. He learnt that his good friend Panchito, with whom he had swapped seats midway through the flight, had not survived, nor had his mother. His sister Susie died a matter of days later in his arms. I still don't know what mourning is.
The need for survival was so serious and important. I never had the time nor the capacity to cry. I desperately wanted to cry, to suffer, to grieve my mother's death. I did manage to bury the bodies with the help of my friends, but I couldn't cry, and that annoyed me.
Despite the devastation, the group were optimistic that they would soon be found. In the meantime, they had to find ways to survive. They made sleeping bags out of the aircraft seats and a device to melt snow for drinking water. However, when their food supplies ran out, they had to turn to extreme measures. Hunger is the most primitive fear man can experience.
We needed to eat, and the only source of food were the corpses of our friends. First of all, it was unpleasant, sickening even. But as the days went by, it became the most normal thing to do in the world, and we didn't talk about it anymore. We realized that we would have starved to death in a few days if we didn't eat anything.
We all made a pact. Each one of us offered their body if it meant the others would survive. It was similar to a communion. Like Christ in the communion, we were offering our bodies to each other. You missed those that had died as they were important in your life, but you recognised that you were alive thanks to them.
As the weeks went past, more passengers died. An avalanche hit which claimed eight lives. Several started to die from hunger or the injuries they'd sustained in the crash.
Seeing their teammates, their friends, perish was tough for those left, and a reminder of their own mortality. It was a horrible sensation. It was a feeling of complete loneliness, a really unsettling feeling. You felt devastated, and you didn't know if you yourself would survive.
I saw what was coming, and I didn't like it. My brothers were those boys in the mountains with me. My world was not millions of people. It was just those 16 of us left alive.
Despite the awful situation in which they found themselves, the rugby players among the group tried to keep morale high by sharing memories of their time with the old Christians. There was a real sense of togetherness and a determination to survive. traits that they felt they owed to their sport.
Without rugby players up there, nobody would have survived. We had all been steeped in rugby from a young age. Through it, we learned respect for others and the concept of teamwork.
In the Andes, we created a community of solidarity. Everything we had up there was shared with everyone else. That rugby education and character formation was extremely important in us achieving our common objective of leaving that place alive. However, that hope of survival was dealt a blow when one of the group managed to get a transistor radio from the cockpit working.
The survivors discovered that the search for them had been called off. That was a horrendous emotion to feel. Everyone was deeply hit by that, because we realized that the rest of the world thought we were dead.
I didn't want to die there. I tried to get my head around it, but I just thought I was in purgatory. The bad news was that the search for us had been suspended.
The good news was, from that moment on, whether we lived or died depended solely on us. The remaining passengers knew that their only hope of escaping the mountains alive was by seeking help themselves. Despite being unaware of their exact location, Antonio Vizintin, Roberto Canessa and Nando Parado started to trek through the snow. I knew I had to leave.
I knew being there did not have to signal the end. They said that the time had come and that they would gladly sacrifice their lives to help their friends. I look back now and I cannot understand how a man like me, full of fear, came to make that decision, because the chances were stacked against me. The moment I left the safety of that group and that plane, I shouldn't have survived. I shouldn't be here.
I should be dead. Antonio had to drop back due to exhaustion, but Nando and Roberto carried on for 10 days and 54 kilometres. They came across a farmer riding on horseback by a stream. He notified the emergency services. Just over ten weeks after being in a fatal air disaster, Nando Parado then boarded the rescue helicopter to locate his friends.
During our time in the mountains there were moments of total horror that you cannot possibly describe. But the magical moment was when we saw the Mule Atir. It was the first spark of life.
We could hear the sounds of a helicopter. It was that recognisable sound. And we knew that we were going back home. We would see our families again.
When I was being lifted into the helicopter, I felt a bittersweet emotion, sadness because we were leaving the place which had become our home, our world, the place where our friends sadly perished. But I also felt happiness because I was about to see the world once more. When I thought I was dead, I was going to see my family. I came back.
I was reborn and I realized that I needed to make the most of this life. Today I can tell you that I'm thankful for that. I'm grateful of having lived 45 more years. I have two children, three grandchildren, and that's very important to me. Being back with my family is the most important thing.
My family are my world now.