History Channel Tivo alert: “I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash”
I first read the superb book Alive back when it came out in the mid-70s, and immediately became fascinated by the harrowing tale it tells of the survivors of the 1972 Andes plane crash. I wrote a little bit about them in this piece for RightNetwork about leadership under extreme conditions, comparing and contrasting their situation with that of the Chilean miners.
Then, coincidentally, I noticed there was a documentary being shown on the History Channel Wednesday night entitled, “I Am Alive: Surviving the Andes Plane Crash.” It’s recent, and excellent. Even though I knew the story of their 72-day ordeal very well and thought there wasn’t much new for me to learn about it in a 2-hour film, this one was loaded with information I’d neither heard nor read before, as well as visuals that made previously murky facts very clear.
But best of all were the interviews with Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa and a couple of the other now-60ish survivors, and a trip back to the site by an experienced climber who tried to retrace their steps and found how extraordinarily difficult their feat was (they had never seen snow before their ordeal began, nor done any mountain climbing). Even watching TV in the warmth and safety of one’s home, the mind reels at the shots of the terrain that faced them—rugged mountains stretching as far as the eye could see into a vast distance—and at the knowledge that, nevertheless, the young Parrado and Canessa climbed out of there while starving, unequipped and freezing, spurred on by the knowledge that the search had long ago been called off, and that this was the last and only chance for them—and for the fourteen other young men they had left behind to wait in the plane’s fuselage for rescue or for death.
The documentary is an unusual combination: part sensationalist adventure/endurance story, part psychological thriller, and part testament to the human spirit and the overwhelming power of love. At the end, there were tears streaming down my cheeks.
If you want to watch it (or Tivo it for later), the film repeats on the History Channel at 5 PM Eastern time on Saturday, Oct 23. And if all else fails, you can buy it.
Even watching TV in the warmth and safety of one’s home, the mind reels at the shots of the terrain that faced them–rugged mountains stretching as far as the eye could see into a vast distance
That’s why, when people tried to escape the taiga, they took along a long pig sandwich… a third person that the other two can eat along the way…
Donner party table for
5i mean4i mean3i mean2, oh heck, you know what i meanI’ve camped out in the Smoky Mountains a couple days when the temp got down in the teens at night. Remembering it very well with my K Mart sleeping bag, i cannot even imagine what those guys went through.
Aside from the deaths, i wonder if some of the men think the experience made their lives better and more meaningful? To survive something like that had to at least make their lives different than what they would have been.
Caught part of this the other night – it was great. I loved the fact that the 16 survivors, all still alive, get together every year on the anniversary of their rescue.
Steve H: several of the survivors have spoken, written, and lectured on that subject. The video goes into it a bit, too.
This 2008 documentary does, as well. It is also excellent, but has a different tone and perspective. More poetic, less scientific.
Steve
I hope it helped or strengthen their appreciate for the here and now and that every day of life and how we treat one another is precious.
Also available from Netflix, should you be a subscriber.
By accident, I saw the last part of this documentary – the part about the two men who hiked out. What an accomplishment! I’m familiar with the expert hiker who was interviewed, Ed Viesturs. He is one of the greatest mountaineers who has ever lived, and is known as a person of integrity. To hear him describe the difficulty the two young men faced … I was amazed.
I too read the book back in the ’70s; riveting, ghoulish and heroic — heady stuff for a teenager.
The film version, starring Ethan Hawk, was pretty good, with perhaps the most harrowing depiction of an airplane crash I’ve ever seen.
Mike Lief: well, count me out on the Ethan Hawke movie. I thought it was absolutely dreadful, a tremendous disappointment when it came out. One of the many many things I disliked about it was that it pretty much skipped over the amazing trek out. Hardly dealt with it at all.
Although I haven’t seen the Ethan Hawke movie, I have seen the opening segment of the plane crash online, and I have to agree with Mike Lief there. It may be the best depiction of a plane crash on film.
Anyway, I just watched the documentary on the History Channel (I missed the first half hour), and thanks for the heads up, neo. I still haven’t read the book yet, but will hopefully get around to it one of these days.
The survival story that has most haunted me since I first read of it in childhood was that of the crew of the WWII bomber Lady Be Good. On April 4, 1943 the nine-man crew left their base on the coast of Libya for their first mission. They never returned and their plane was thought to have gone down in the Mediterranean. They were listed as missing in action and presumed dead.
In 1958, members of a British oil survey team spotted the wreckage of an airplane in the middle of the desert…
Probably the best book about the incident was Lady’s Men. It necessarily contains a lot of speculation, since none of the men survived. Based on the location of their remains, two of them walked nearly 80 miles, and one may have walked over 100 miles, but his body was never found–or was it?
A little more detail about the Lady Be Good story: I called it a survival story, even though none of the men survived. But some of them may have lived as long as two weeks, and they made a Herculean effort to make it back to civilization.
The part of the desert where they went down is one of the most inhospitable places on Earth. It is as barren and lifeless as the surface of the Moon. If I recall correctly, they had half a canteen of water and a few pieces of candy between them. And they were over 200 miles from their base. They never stood a chance. It will never be known whether they were truly aware of their predicament, or whether they thought they were closer than that.