MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Desperate efforts to rescue men trapped in Antarctic crevasse

The Argentine team involved in the search of two missing members disappeared in an Antarctic crevasse since September 17, joined Thursday the rescue efforts of the Chilean Army that has three men trapped in a snow vehicle which plunged forty metres into a crack in the ice cap.

The three Chilean military belonged to a patrol of seven who where travelling in an exploration vehicle doing maintenance and repair jobs in Chilean refuge stations and which mid Wednesday fell into a crevasse in spite of having kept to the same GPS chartered route they had travelled along when they had left early morning.

Of the seven, four were rescued from a depth of forty metres but the three others remain inside the vehicle and had to spend overnight since lack of visibility and bad weather conditions prevented further actions.

The four who managed to escape were travelling in the vehicle's bucket.

The fresh rescue team is working with metal cutting tools that should enable a quick rescue of the remaining three said Colonel Miguel Santibañez, commander of the Chilean Army Antarctic Department.

"We trust the solid structure of the vehicle and the survival kits of our men are helping them overcome such dramatic conditions", added Colonel Santibáñez. The snow vehicle was lost close to the Jorge Boonen Rivera refuge, next to Mackenna Pass, 17 kilometres from the Bernardo O'Higgins base, according to Chilean sources.

A Chilean DHC-6 Twin Otter which was sent Wednesday afternoon for the medical evacuation of the four survivors was unable to land because of lack of visibility.

Last September 17 two men from an Argentine patrol of several snow-vehicles heading back to their base from the Uruguayan station General Artigas plunged into a crevasse and remain missing in spite of joint Argentine and Chilean efforts.

The crack in the Collins glacier according to reports from rescuers is at least 200 metres deep.