Free Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read l Summary & Study Guide by BookRags

 
 
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    Alive: The Story
of the Andes Survivors by Piers Paul Read

 
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    Plot Summary

 
    Alive is the story of an airplane
flight that crashed over the Andes Mountains. It is also the story of how some
of the stranded passengers survived following the crash and their reintegration
into the society they left behind. Upon its departure on October 12, 1972, the
Fairchild flight carried forty-five people. This number included the Old
Christians Rugby team, of which there were fifteen team members, who had
charted the plane. Also on board were twenty-five friends and family of the
team and the plane's crew of five. All of the Old Christians team players were
alumni of Stella Maris College and as such they had long-standing friendships.
They were in jovial spirits when they boarded the plane in Montevideo, Uruguay.
Air patterns in the Andes mountains can be
treacherous. The plane was grounded in the afternoon because of poor weather
but resumed its flight the following day under more favorable conditions. The
flight seemed to be going well, and the pilot prepared to descend to their
destination, Santiago. A minute later the plane lost all contact and plummeted
into the Andes mountain range.

 
    The Chilean and Argentinian governments searched for the lost plane for
eight days with no results. During this, time the survivors of the crash took
inventory and tended to the wounded as much as possible. They subsided off very
little food. The Fairchild was not stocked with food, so the meager nourishment
available to them consisted of souvenirs purchased for friends and
family--mostly chocolate and wine. The area in which they crashed was barren of
life, and it was winter, so there were no natural resources (aside from frozen
water) to forage. After two full weeks in the mountains, the survivors were
weak. Even though they rationed the food and divided it equally, it had run
out. They were now full into the winter season, and conditions grew increasingly
harsh. An avalanche over came them while they were sleeping, and another eight
lives were lost. Morale was low and the passengers began to think less of being
rescued and more about surviving until Spring when a
rescue would be feasible. In order to facilitate this they began to eat the
muscle and flesh of their deceased peers, whose bodies had been preserved in
the sub zero conditions since the day of the crash.

 
    While the decision to eat human
flesh was difficult, it was necessary. This source of nourishment lasted them
through the winter. Through some ingenious designing, they cooked meat, made
mittens, and created hammocks in which the wounded to rested. They selected two
strong men to hike out of the mountains and find help for the others. When Spring came, the two men were finally ready. The two expeditionaries , Canessa and Parrado , set out with their make-shift gear and frozen meat
stores. They trekked a grueling sixty miles through snow-covered mountains
before finding civilization. Because of the altitude, the hike took ten days.
It had been a total of seventy days since the Fairchild had crashed. While the
government agencies had officially stopped the search months earlier, they
resumed the search after Canessa and Parrado's return. The remaining survivors were evacuated on
December 22, 1972. All were brought first to a base