Juliane continued through the rainforest, wading through the jungle streams. The water was home to piranhas and poisonous fish, but none attacked her. Crocodiles lined the banks of the streams, but again Juliane’s knowledge of the environment helped her: she just walked calmly by the creatures, confident that they generally do not attack humans.
The stream supplied her with ample clean water and a natural path through the dense rainforest. But it gave her no real food. The only sustenance she had was some candy she had found scattered by the wreckage. She also had several open lacerations which were vulnerable to parasites.
After a few days, Juliane became aware of an unusual sensation in one of the cuts on her arm. It felt a bit like an infection, but it became increasingly irritating, as if there was something in the wound. When she looked she discovered that a fly had laid its eggs in the hole in her arm. They had hatched and now maggots were writhing within her flesh. Terrified that she would lose her arm, there was little she could do without proper medical attention.
As each day passed she became weaker and more vulnerable. Was she right to have followed her father’s advice? What if there were no human settlements for hundreds of miles? Maybe she should have waited to be rescued.
But then, on the tenth day, she stumbled out of the jungle and almost tripped over a canoe. There was a shelter beside it, and there she waited.
A few hours later, the lumberjacks who lived in the shelter finished their day’s work and returned to eat and rest. They must have been astonished to see a bedraggled and exhausted young girl in a torn mini-skirt and one sandal sitting in their hut.
Although the cut in her arm was only a centimetre across, medics later removed more than fifty maggots from the hole.
They dressed her injuries and insect bites as best they could and the next morning they took her downstream in their canoe. It took seven hours to reach a lumber station in Tournavista, and from there Juliane was airlifted to a hospital in Pucallpa. Her father was waiting for her.
And after…
Juliane returned to Germany to recuperate and continue her studies. In 1987, she earned a PhD degree in zoology, like her parents. She went on to specialize in mammalogy, studying bats in Munich, Germany.
The Cruel Cost of Survival
| WHEN THEIR PLANE CRASHED HIGH IN THE ANDES, THE PASSENGERS SPENT OVER TWO MONTHS BATTLING BRUTAL COLD, ALTITUDE SICKNESS AND AVALANCHES. SEVERE HUNGER FORCED THEM TO EAT THE BODIES OF THEIR DEAD FRIENDS. EVENTUALLY TWO MEN COMPLETED A MARATHON TREK OUT OF THE SNOWY WILDERNESS TO GET HELP. |
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| DATE: 1972 SITUATION: PLANE CRASH CONDITION OF CONFINEMENT: IN A CRASHED PLANE HIGH IN THE ANDES DURATION OF CONFINEMENT: 72 DAYS MEANS OF ESCAPE: TREKKING TO GET HELP; RESCUE NO. OF ESCAPEES: 16 DANGERS: AVALANCHE, HYPOTHERMIA, STARVATION, DEHYDRATION, ALTITUDE SICKNESS, FROSTBITE EQUIPMENT: PARTS OF THE CRASHED PLANE; LUGGAGE |
On 13 October 1972, Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crashed in the mountains close to the Chile / Argentina border.
Impact
The first mountain tore the right wing off. The second sliced the left. Then the belly of the aircraft clipped another ridge and the tail sheared off. Now the fuselage was like a bullet flying through the rarefied air. The slim metal tube with forty-five people in it then dropped to earth and skidded to a halt in a flurry of snow and screaming metal.
Unfortunately for the passengers, the plane crash was just the start of their ordeal.
The touring team
Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered plane carrying five crew and forty passengers, including a rugby team and their friends and family.
The flight took off on 12 October 1972 and should have been a fairly standard hop over the Andes from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Santiago, Chile, where the rugby team was due to play a match. But a storm in the mountains forced the plane to stop overnight at Mendoza. When they took off again the next afternoon, the bad weather still hadn’t cleared, but the experienced military crew were confident they could navigate through the serrated Andean peaks.
As they climbed through the pass, the mountains on either side were lost in the clouds, so the pilots had to estimate their position based on their speed and route. But they made a crucial error, failing to fully allow for the very strong headwinds. These retarded the plane’s progress severely, so that when they radioed air controllers in Santiago that they were over Curicó, Chile, and asked for permission to descend, they were in fact still deep in the jagged jaws of the mountains.
The plane hit an unnamed peak between Cerro Sosneado and Volcán Tinguiririca in the remote mountains that form the border between Chile and Argentina. With both wings torn off and the fuselage ripped open, the plane came to rest in the snow at around 3,600 m (11,800 ft) up the mountain.
Death all around
Of the forty-five people on board, twelve died in the crash or shortly thereafter, including all five crew. A further five people had perished by the next morning, and one more succumbed to injuries on the eighth day.
The remaining twenty seven now found themselves in a living nightmare. Many of them were severely injured, with broken limbs and internal damage. Although there were two medical students among the survivors, they had very little equipment. They had to salvage bits of the aircraft to create makeshift splints and braces.
They had expected to be in the relatively warm climes of Santiago; now they were 3,600 m (11,800 ft) up an Andean mountain in winter. Temperatures during the day were unpleasantly sub-zero, but the nights were brutally cold. No one had cold-weather clothing or any suitable footwear. The altitude made breathing, even when stationary, very difficult. Labouring in those conditions would be a serious endeavour.
They didn’t know it at the time, but they would be stranded in this barren landscape for more than two months.
Lost in a sea of white
The plane was white. The area it had crashed in was a vast, remote, snow covered mountain wasteland. Its last position wasn’t known to any accuracy. Despite search parties from three countries flying over the region, the odds of them finding the survivors were very slim.
The authorities had to assume the worst. Even if anyone had survived, the simple fact was that after so long in such an environment, they would have perished soon afterwards. The main search was called off after eight days.
Survivors