ALL Nando Parrado remembers is a deep black hole and one recurring thought: “I’m dead. I’m dead. This is death. It’s so black that this is death.” Hours passed, maybe days. Then, a new thought: “I’m thirsty. I’m craving water. If I’m dead, I cannot crave water.”
His awareness increased. Why was it cold? Why did his head throb? Then, voices. Nando opened his eyes.
“I remember the clear, beautiful faces of my friends,” he recalls. “And they were saying: ‘Nando, are you okay? Nando, are you okay?’ I was not okay.”
He looked around and saw he was inside a mangled fuselage that had rolled on to its side. The damage was catastrophic: exposed pipes and cables, crumpled metal, shattered plastic, detritus everywhere.
Nando pressed the side of his head, his hair clumped with clotted blood, the edges of splintered bone. His friend Roberto Canessa that explained the plane they were travelling in had hit a mountain three days before and Nando had been unconscious since. Nando’s thoughts turned to his mother, Eugenia, and sister, Susy.
“They told me: ‘Nando, your mother is dead. Panchito is dead’.” Francisco “Panchito” Abal was his best friend. He’d made Nando give up the window seat for him during the flight.
“Panchito was my brother. He lived two or three days a week in my home, he used my clothes.”
‘I TOLD THE DIRECTOR: ‘AFTER PEOPLE SEE THIS FILM, THEY WILL REALLY UNDERSTAND WHAT WE WENT THROUGH’
Susy was gravely injured, lying on the floor by the cockpit.
“I crawled to where my sister was and I embraced her on the floor. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t talk. She could only move her eyes.
