URUGUAY: Survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes mountains are marking the 40th anniversary since the accident with an exhibition

Record ID: 351555

  • Title: URUGUAY: Survivors of a 1972 plane crash in the Andes mountains are marking the 40th anniversary since the accident with an exhibition
  • Date: 11th October 2012
  • Summary: STILL PHOTO OF CANESSA WEARING PANTS AND SWEATSHIRT ON DAY OF RESCUE
  • Embargoed: 26th October 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Uruguay
  • Country: Uruguay
  • Topics: Disasters
  • Reuters ID: LVA76C11GOX6AHSBSTQQGOSD2UXK
  • Story Text: Forty years after a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team crashed high in the Andes, an exhibition is being staged in Montevideo to commemorate the anniversary.
    The exhibit is a reminder of an incredible tale which saw the survivors battle for 72 days after rescuers gave them up for dead.
    They were forced to dig up some of their dead colleagues they had buried in the snow nearby and eat them just to survive. The story of the crash - in which just 16 of the 45 passengers survived - was retold in the 1993 movie "Alive".
    The exhibit showcases items used by the survivors - makeshift sunglasses made to protect their eyes from the snow and the battered radio they were listening to when they heard rescue crews had called off their search after 10 days.
    Roberto Canessa was one of two survivors who finally trekked for 10 days out of the mountains to raise the alarm.
    Canessa, now 59-years old, said he has never forgotten the courage he saw during that time.
    "These are the boots I used for the walk. If you look at the soles, you can see they are completely destroyed from the rocks, from the ten days of ice and mountains. They belonged to Javier Methol. Javier said to me: 'Roberto, I know you are going to make it. You need these boots more than I do.' They were given to me a by a guy who had only one lung and one eye. He had lost his wife in an avalanche slide and we were suffering nights of 30 degrees (Celsius) below zero. That's the spirit of the Andes. That's what I believe I can't forget," he said, standing over the tattered leather boots.
    Now an award-winning paediatric cardiologist, Canessa became a leader of the group form the moment of the crash - providing first aid and emotional support to the traumatised.
    And he was the man, aged just 19 at the time, that saved the other survivors from what seemed to be a certain death.
    Shortly after his unlikely trek to freedom, Canessa married his high school girlfriend, Laura Surraco, and the couple had three children.
    "Forty years later it seems impossible to me to be here. To get out of the snow and ice, that place where I was surrounded by my dead friends, where I was going to be the next to die, and then to have finished my medical degree and to have had all those patients who survived just like me-- I can identify with 40 years of giving thanks to God," he said.
    Jose Luis Inciarte, another survivor, also feels blessed. Sitting in his home in Montevideo, Inciarte says he has never forgotten.
    "For some things it seems like a long time ago and for others it seems like just yesterday. Remembering my friends, it really seems like yesterday. You think about them all the time. That's why we have the "Fundacion Viven", to remember them and everything they did. And the family I've formed, my grandchildren… I always think about what the children and grandchildren of my dear friends who died there would be like," he said.
    Inciarte was among the 14 survivors who stayed back at the airplane's torn fuselage while Canessa and Parrado walked in search of help.
    He draws, often taking inspiration from the crash. He shows sketches of the men huddled in the body of the plane listening to the radio, or sitting outside making water from snow.
    And he shows a drawing of the most glorious day of all-- when the helicopters flew in to take them to safety.
    "In 40 years, a lot of beautiful things have happened. I've done what I wrote in a little notebook I would do if I survived. That future is complete," he said.
    Inciarte married Soledad Gonzalez Mulllin, his girlfriend at the time, shortly after the accident, becoming a successful businessman in Uruguay.
    He expresses the same joy as Canessa at making it out of the mountains and getting the chance to form a family.
    "I'm happy about what has happened to me, because it let me make my family happy and be happy by forming my own family. I thought so many times I wasn't going to have it. That's why I hurried to get married to my long-time girlfriend and now we've been married for 39 years. She's given me three beautiful children and now I have something I never expected, three grandchildren and a fourth on the way, as I found out just a few days ago. All this, I think, adds up to life being generous to me, even too generous. And if there's something I regret about those 72 days it's not having given more, because you can always give more, always," Inciarte said.
    The exhibit is being held at a cultural centre in Montevideo's Carrasco neighbourhood, the area where most of the survivors grew up and where many still live.
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