THROWBACKTHISDAY, DEC 24; The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days.

                            

On thisday December 23  1972 The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are rescued after 73 days, having survived by cannibalism.
 Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight carrying 45 people, including a rugby union team, their friends, family and associates, that crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972, in an incident known as the Andes flight disaster and, in South America, as the Miracle in the Andes (El Milagro de los Andes). More than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash and several others quickly succumbed to cold and injury. Of the 27 who were alive a few days after the accident, another eight were killed by an avalanche that swept over their shelter in the wreckage. The last 16 survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the crash.

The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions at over 3,600 metres (11,800 ft) altitude. Faced with starvation and radio news reports that the search for them had been abandoned, the survivors fed on the dead passengers who had been preserved in the snow. Rescuers did not learn of the survivors until 72 days after the crash when passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, after a 10-day trek across the Andes, found Chilean arriero Sergio Catalán, who gave them food and then alerted the authorities to the existence of the other survivors.

 

THROWBACKTHISDAY; makes it 43 years and TBT Blog remembers.