That evening, they spoke as usual with Carrasco and were told that there had been a mistake in the translation of one of Croiset’s messages. The plane would be found to the left of a mountain without a peak, not to the right, as they had previously been told.
They therefore set off the next day, November 3, with two guides towards the small town of Vilches, thirty-seven miles from Talca. There they divided into two groups and went into the mountains.
The fathers were not as fit as their sons, and it was not easy for them to climb in the cold air with packs on their go backs. Both groups climbed the Cerro del Peine, but when they reached the summit nothing could be seen. In a thick cloud, they began the descent to Vilches, clambering over boulders and steadying themselves with thick staves as their knees wobbled on the steep decline.
The Laguna del Alto lay on their way back, and they explored the rocks around it for signs of a plane. There were none.
They were back in Vilches by November 7, and the next day the helicopter was free again and returned from Santiago. In the morning it flew over the Despalmado mountain; in the afternoon it checked the area of the Quebrada del Toro, where a peasant was reported to have heard the sound of a plane crashing to the ground. The Uruguayans waited in Vilches for the results of these forays; they were all negative.
On November 9 the party returned to Talca and a day later to Santiago. They reported to the SAR on what they had done, and the authorities repeated that the official search would not be resumed until the thaw had set in – ‘at the end of January, perhaps, or the beginning of February’ – and then in the area of the Tinguiririca volcano.
On the same day, in Montevideo, news came that Croiset had made a drawing of the area of the accident and had recorded on tape a more extensive description than he had been able to give over the telephone. The package containing them would arrive via KLM at noon the next day.
Some time before it did so, a group of relatives gathered at Carrasco airport to await this important package. There was a flight to Santiago that afternoon, and they wanted to have Croiset’s drawings copied and his tape transcribed before sending the originals on to Páez Vilaró, Zerbino, and Surraco in Santiago on that flight.
With them at the airport were the consul of the Netherlands and the father of an Old Christian (Bobby Jaugust) who was the KLM representative in Uruguay. To have brought these two men proved a wise precaution, for the parcel from Croiset had not been shipped separately but was somewhere in two sacks of post from Europe. Authority was given to open and search them, and eventually the parcel was found. It was opened at once; one team set to work copying his sketches and another to transcribing the tape.
When this had been done, the original tape and drawings were put on the SAS flight to Santiago. Páez Vilaró was then contacted by radio and told of the conclusions they had reached: everything in the drawings and the message pointed to the Laguna del Alto in the pre-cordillera by Talca.
The three men in Santiago were less convinced. After days searching in the pre-cordillera they were in a better position to assess the value of Croiset’s package, and much of what he said seemed quite irrelevant to the conditions they had encountered.
He said the accident had occurred near a beach, either by the sea or on a lake. Close by there was a shepherd’s hut and only a little farther a village with white Mexican-style houses, near which a battle had taken place in 1876. He saw letters and figures on the plane – an N and a Y and the figures 3002. The figure 1036 had also come into his head, perhaps signifying that the plane was 1,036 metres (3,400 feet) above sea level.
The nose of the plane was crushed; it had come down softly like an insect and had lost both its wings. He saw the fuselage separately from the rest of the plane but could not identify its markings, perhaps because it was too dark under the shelf of rock where it had crashed. Nor could he see any life in the plane; no one looked out of the windows.
His sketches were rudimentary. There was also a triangle giving specific distances but no point on which they could take a bearing. In all, it was a mixture of magic and technical data which Surraco, for one, could not stomach. ‘It’s completely unscientific,’ he said. ‘We’re chasing after nothing at all. If we search anywhere it should be around the Tinguiririca volcano. That’s where the facts as we know them tell us the plane should be.’
Zerbino agreed with him. He saw no point in returning to Talca, and since they had not the means to search in the higher mountains around the Tinguiririca, he booked seats for himself and Surraco to return to Montevideo the next day.
Páez Vilaró temporized. He certainly had doubts about Croiset, but he could not bring himself to disappoint Madelon and the other women who still believed in him. He therefore told Zerbino and Surraco that he would remain in Chile for a day or two more, and when they returned to Uruguay he went back to Talca. There he made one more trip to the Laguna del Alto but found nothing.
Some time before the boys had left for Chile, Páez Vilaró had made a commitment to go to Brazil in the middle of November. It was now close to the day when he was expected in São Paulo, so he prepared to leave. He had spent more than a month hunting for the plane, and even now he made arrangements for others to continue the search while he was away. He had printed several thousand leaflets offering, on behalf of the parents, a reward of 300,000 escudos to any one who gave information leading to the finding of the Fairchild. He also prepared the ground for Estela Pérez, who was to take over in Talca, and before he went he gave some money to the school children of Talca to enable them to form a soccer team called the Old Christians.
On November 16, Páez Vilaró returned to Montevideo.
Five
1
The seventeenth day, October 29, passed quite well for those stranded in the Fairchild. They were still cold, wet, dirty, and hungry, and some were in great pain, but in the last few days a degree of order seemed to have been imposed on the chaos. The teams for cutting, cooking, melting snow, and cleaning the cabin were working well, and the wounded were sleeping a little more comfortably in the hanging beds. More important still, they had started to single out the fittest among them as potential expeditionaries who would master the Andes and get help. Their mood was optimistic.
They ate at midday; by half past four in the afternoon the sun went behind the mountain to the west, and at once it became bitterly cold. They filed in groups of two into the hulk of the plane in the order they were to sleep – Juan Carlos Menéndez, Pancho Delgado, Roque, the mechanic, and Numa Turcatti entered last, for it was their turn to sleep by the entrance.
Each boy, as he entered, took off his shoes and put them up on part of the hat rack on the right-hand side. They had decided that day to make this rule to save the cushions and blankets from getting wet. Then the couples crawled up the plane to their assigned places.
Though it was only the middle of the afternoon, some closed their eyes and tried to sleep. Vizintín had slept badly the night before and was determined to make himself as warm and comfortable as possible. He had been allowed to keep his shoes because he slept exposed to the cold on the hanging bunk. There was a strong wind outside which blew freezing air through every hole and crack in the plane. He had managed to secure a large number of cushions and blankets (the covers of the cushions which they had sewn together), and with these he padded and covered his body, including his head.
Carlitos Páez said the rosary out loud, and some of the boys talked quietly among themselves. Gustavo Nicolich confided to Roy Harley his hope that if he died someone would take back the letter he had written to his novia. ‘And if we all die,’ he said, ‘they might find the wreck and the letter and give it to her. I miss her so much and I feel so awful because I paid very little attention to her. And to her mother.’ There was a silence; then he added, ‘There are so many things one regrets … I hope I have a chance to put them right.’
The dim light grew dimmer still; a few drifted into half-sleep, and their breathing to
ok on a more regular pattern which in its turn lulled others to sleep. Canessa remained awake, trying to communicate telepathically with his mother in Montevideo. He held a strong image of her in his mind and repeated over and over again in emphatic whispers which were inaudible to the others, ‘Mama, I am alive, I am alive, I am alive …’ Eventually he too dozed off.
The plane was now silent, but Diego Storm could not sleep because of a painful sore on his back. He was lying between Javier Methol and Carlitos Páez on the floor, but the longer he lay in such discomfort, the more convinced he became that it would be better on the other side of the plane. He looked across and saw that Roy Harley was still awake, so he asked him if he would change places. Roy agreed and they squeezed out of their positions and crawled by one another.
Roy lay down on the floor with a shirt covering his face, thinking about what Nicolich had said, when he felt a faint vibration and an instant later heard the sound of metal falling to the ground. This sound made him jump up, but as he did so he was smothered in snow. He found himself standing buried up to his waist and when he took the shirt from his eyes what he saw appalled him. The plane was almost entirely filled with snow. The wall at the entrance had been toppled and buried, and the blankets, cushions and sleeping bodies which had covered the floor were now hidden. Quickly, Roy turned to his right and burrowed for Carlitos, who had been sleeping there. He uncovered his face, then his torso, but still Carlitos could not free himself. There was a creak as the snow settled, and in the bitter cold its surface immediately began to form into brittle ice.
Roy left Carlitos because he saw the hands of others sticking out of the snow. He felt desperate; he alone seemed to be free to help. He uncovered Canessa and then went to the front of the cabin and dug out Fito Strauch, but the minutes were passing and many boys remained buried. Above, from one of the hanging beds, Vizintín had started to burrow in the snow, but Echavarren could not move and Nogueira, though free, seemed paralysed by shock.
Roy crawled frantically to the entrance and squeezed himself out of the small hole that was left, as if he might shovel out the snow by the way it had come in, but he realized at once that this was hopeless so he crawled back into the cabin. There he saw that Fito Strauch, Canessa, Páez, and Moncho Sabella were free and digging.
Fito Strauch had been talking with Coche Inciarte when the avalanche fell upon them. He realized immediately what had happened and struggled against the grip of the snow, but he could not move any part of his body so much as an inch one way or the other. He relaxed and thought with resignation that he was about to die; even if he could escape he might be the only one to do so, and perhaps it would be better to die than to survive alone, isolated in the Andes. Then he heard voices and Roy Harley took hold of his hand. As Roy burrowed toward his face, Fito told his cousin Eduardo, through a hole between them in the snow, to keep calm, to breathe slowly, and to ask after Marcelo. After that he felt a sharp pain in his toe and realized that Inciarte had bitten it. He too was alive.
Fito was freed. Eduardo climbed out of the same hole, and Inciarte, after digging a short tunnel, emerged, followed by Daniel Fernández and Bobby Francois. They all immediately began to burrow with their bare hands in the packed snow, and the first they dug for was Marcelo. When they found his face, however, they saw that he was already dead.
Fito now worked hard to dig down to the living. He also organized the others, who were in some cases so dazed that they did not know what they were doing. Even when a stitch forced him to rest, he continued to urge on the different teams so that those who were digging one hole would not throw their snow into a shaft dug by others.
Parrado lay in the middle of the plane with Liliana Methol on his left and Daniel Maspons on his right. He heard and saw nothing but suddenly found that he was smothered and paralysed by heavy, cold snow. He could not breathe, but he had read in the Reader’s Digest that it was possible to live under the snow, so he attempted to take small breaths. He continued to do this for several minutes, but the weight on his chest became more terrible, he grew dizzy, and he knew that he was about to die. He did not think of God nor of his family but remarked to himself, ‘Okay, I’m dying.’ Then, just as his lungs were about to explode, the snow was scraped from his face.
Coche Inciarte had seen the avalanche and then heard it, a whoosh followed by silence. He lay immobilized with three feet of snow over him and Fito’s toe in his face. He bit it. It was the only way to find out if Fito was alive or tell him that he was. The toe moved.
The snow settled on top of him and its weight made him urinate. He could not breathe or move. He waited and then felt the toe being dragged away from his face. He struggled against the snow and finally slipped out by the same tunnel.
Carlitos Páez had been uncovered to the waist by Roy but still couldn’t move until Fito, when freed, dug away the snow from around his legs. He immediately began to look for his friends Nicolich and Storm, but the snow froze l is hands as he burrowed. He warmed them quickly with his gas cigarette lighter and continued to dig, but when he found Nicolich and gripped his hand it was cold and lifeless and gave no clasp in return.
There was no time for lamentation. Carlitos at once dug the snow away from Zerbino’s face and then freed Parrado. Then he returned and burrowed toward Diego Storm, but the snow he scraped away fell onto Parrado, who swore at him. He dug more carefully, but it was all to no avail – when he found him, Diego was dead.
To Canessa, the avalanche came like the magnesium flash of an old camera. He too was buried, imprisoned and suffocating, and like Parrado he was possessed less by panic than by curiosity. Well, he thought to himself, I’ve got as far as this, and now I’m going to know what it’s like to die. At last I’ll experience all those abstract notions like God and Purgatory and Heaven or Hell. I’ve always wondered how the story of my life would end; well, here I am at the last chapter. Yet just as the book was about to be closed, a hand touched him; he clasped it, and Roy Harley sank a shaft to bring air to his lungs.
As soon as he could move Canessa searched for Daniel Maspons. He found his friend lying as if asleep, but he was dead.
The snow which covered Zerbino left a small cavity which enabled him to breathe for a few minutes. Like Canessa and Parrado, he did not pray to God or repent of his sins but, though his mind was calm, his body was not resigned to death. He had thrown up one arm at the moment the avalanche struck, and his struggles opened a fissure in the snow beside it, down which air came to his lungs.
Above him he heard the gruff voice of Carlitos Páez shout down, ‘Is that you, Gustavo?’
‘Yes!’ shouted Zerbino.
‘Gustavo Nicolich?’
‘No. Gustavo Zerbino’
Carlitos moved on.
Later another voice called down to him, ‘Are you all right?’
Zerbino replied, ‘Yes, I’m okay. Save someone else.’ He then waited in his tomb until the others had time to dig him out.
Roque and Menéndez had been killed by the falling wall, but part of that wall saved the lives of the two others who slept next to it. Numa Turcatti and Pancho Delgado were trapped under the curved door, which had been the emergency exit to the plane and had been built into the wall, but they had air enough to breathe under its concave surface. They survived like this for six or seven minutes. They made sounds, however, and Inciarte came with Zerbino to their rescue. The snow there at the back of the plane was very deep and Inciarte asked Arturo Nogueira, who was watching from his hanging bed, to help them dig. Nogueira did not move, nor did he say anything. He stayed trancelike on the hanging bed.
Pedro Algorta, still buried beneath the snow, had only what air he held in his lungs. He felt himself near to death, yet the knowledge that after his death his body would help the others to survive instilled in him a kind of ecstasy. It was as if he were already at the portals of heaven. Then the snow was scraped away from his face.
Javier Methol had been able to reach out of the snow with his hand, bu
t as they tried to free him he only shouted at the boys to dig towards Liliana instead. Javier could feel his wife with his feet and feared she might be suffocating, but he could do nothing to help her. ‘Liliana,’ he shouted, ‘make an effort! Hold on. I’ll get to you!’ He knew that she might live for a minute or two without air, but the weight of the boys digging all around him was pressing the snow down upon her. Moreover, their instincts were to help first their own friends, then those whose hands they could see stretching out from beneath the snow. Inevitably, they left until last those like Javier, who could breathe, and those like Liliana, who were completely lost from view.
Javier continued to shout to his wife, begging her to hold on, to have faith, to breathe slowly. Finally, he was freed by Zerbino, and together they dug for Liliana. When they found her she was dead. Javier slumped down onto the snow, weeping, overwhelmed by grief. His only consolation came from his conviction that she who had given him such love and solace on earth must now be watching over him from heaven.
Javier was not alone in sorrow, for when the living huddled together in the few feet of space that was left to them between the roof of the plane and the icy floor of snow, they found that some of their dearest friends lay buried beneath them. Marcelo Pérez was dead; so too were Carlos Roque and Juan Carlos Menéndez, crushed beneath the wall; Enrique Platero, whose stomach wound had healed at last; Gustavo Nicolich, whose courage after the broadcast had saved them from despair; Daniel Maspons, Canessa’s closest friend; and Diego Storm, one of the ‘gang’. Eight had died under the snow.
The conditions facing the nineteen who survived were not so terrible that they did not all feel bitter sorrow at the death of their friends. Some wished that they too had been smothered by the snow rather than continue a life of such physical and spiritual suffering without their companions. This wish was almost met, for a second avalanche hit the plane an hour or so after the first, but because the entrance was already blocked, most of this second fall passed over the plane. In doing so, however, it sealed off the gap through which Roy Harley had crawled out and then in again. The Fairchild was completely buried.