MIRACLE OF ANDES STORY, PART -1

Hello, friends!

12th October, 1972 A small chartered aircraft took off from Uruguay, South America. This aircraft was going to Santiago, the capital of Chile.

Carrying some rugby players, tall and broad. There were 45 passengers in total, some of the players' family and friends had tagged along.

This flight was not going to be long. Usually, it takes only 3 hours to go from Uruguay to Santiago.

But on the way, you come across the huge Andes Mountains. The Andes Mountain Range in South America is the world's longest mountain range.

Other than the Himalayan mountains, the highest mountains are found here.

These beautiful mountains become devastating for the passengers in our story. That day, on 12th October, there was a storm in the mountains.

because of which, the plane couldn't keep flying. The pilots then decided to stop midway and try to fly again the next day.

The plane landed in Mendoza, Argentina for the night. The next day, on October 13th, the plane took off again at 2:18 p.m. The pilots ensured that the weather had cleared up. So it was a smooth-sailing flight for the next hour.

At 3:21 p.m., the pilots start descending the plane. The plane was quite close to Santiago but was still in the mountains.

Since there are high mountains right next to the city. While descending, suddenly there was terrible turbulence. The plane started shaking horizontally.

Around this time, clouds gathered around the plane. Nothing was visible except the clouds. Suddenly, the alarms in the plane went off, and the warning lights began to flash.

No one could understand why. The rugby players in the passenger seats weren't scared.

They didn't take this turbulence seriously. Amid jokes, a passenger looked out of the window and saw the clouds clearing up.

But then he noticed that they were perilously close to a mountain.

As soon as the aircraft moved out of the clouds, the pilots realized that they were moving towards a huge rock.

Immediately in a panic, they try to lift the plane up. The aircraft's ground collision alarm was ringing loudly. Pilots put in maximum power into gaining altitude.

To fly over the mountain safely. But unfortunately, it was too late. The rear of the aircraft collided with the mountain while going up.

The entire rear portion of the plane separated. The two rows of seats at the back literally, flew out of the plane. Three passengers flew away with it and disappeared.

The plane kept flying upwards for a few more seconds but then suddenly, it started to fall down. After a few seconds, another collision happened.

The left wing of the plane broke. Some more passengers flew out of the plane and fell down.

Now, only the front portion of the plane remained and it fell into a glacier. It slid down the glacier at a speed of 350 km/h and finally, it crashed after dropping 700 meters.

Everything in the plane was destroyed. The passenger seats were torn apart from the base of the plane.

The cockpit of the plane was completely crushed and the pilots were killed immediately.

This aircraft lay broken on an unknown mountain in the Andes at a height of 3,570 meters.

Surprisingly, out of the 45 people on board, 33 were still alive. They had somehow survived this crash.

The problem was that many of them were injured and no one knew where they were stuck.

It was later found that this plane was 80 km off from its planned route.

And this painful story of survival had just begun, friends. Neither those people could have imagined at that time, nor you can imagine now, what happened to these survivors next.

This is the heart-wrenching story of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571. "Plane crashed in Andes Mountains. 45 persons were aboard. Given up for d*ad."

"Survival fascinates people." "All of the passengers were given up for d*ad." "It became known as the Miracle of the Andes." Right after this crash, there were two survivors who weren't seriously injured.

First, 19-year-old Roberto Canessa and the other, 20-year-old Gustavo Zerbino.

Since both of them were medical students, they immediately started checking who was alive and how to help the injured.

They saw that many passengers had suffered severe injuries. One of them was 23-year-old Fernando Parrado who was in a coma due to a skull fracture.

These two medical students tried their best to help the survivors.

On the other hand, within an hour of the plane's disappearance, the Chilean Air Search and Rescue Service received a notification.

Four aircraft were deployed to search for the survivors. They tried to find the crash site from dusk till night, but unfortunately, they didn't find anything.

The rescue service officers concluded after hearing the radio transmissions that the aircraft must have crashed in a remote and inaccessible area.

The problem was that the aircraft was white in colour and it had crashed in a place where there was white snow and ice all around.

It was very difficult to locate it in the snowy mountains. On the night of 1.