Explosion Was Recorded Where Argentine Submarine Went Missing
By DANIEL POLITI and ERNESTO LONDOÑO
NOVEMBER 23, 2017
The Argentine Navy said on Thursday that a catastrophic explosion was recorded in the area where
a submarine went missing on Nov. 15, an ominous disclosure that immediately caused relatives of the 44 crew members to burst into tears.
The nature of the explosion, which was described as an “anomalous, short, violent” event, was not immediately clear, but the disclosure dampened the hopes of
a multinational team of rescuers who have been searching for the vessel, and immediately revived concerns about the worst outcome.
Capt. Enrique Balbi, a spokesman for the Argentine Navy, said the international search team would continue to look for the vessel, the San Juan.
“Until we don’t have certainty we’re going to carry on the search effort,” he said Wednesday morning.
The United States Navy, which is helping with the search, shared the information about the catastrophic explosion with the Argentines on Wednesday, according to Captain Balbi.
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, which runs monitoring stations equipped with underwater microphones,
supplied corroborating information about the explosion, via the Argentine ambassador in Austria, on Thursday morning.
After analyzing the two pieces of information, the Argentine Navy broke the news initially to relatives and then, minutes later, to journalists assembled at a base in Mar del Plata.
The submarine was not armed with nuclear weapons and the explosion was not believed to have involved a nuclear weapon, Captain Balbi said.
The two reports about an explosion — from the United States Navy and from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization — each provided a radius of about 77 miles, and that area is now being searched.
He said there was no way of knowing what had caused the accident.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have that information: what may have been the cause in that location, on that day, of an event of these characteristics,” Captain Balbi said.
Cmdr. Erik Reynolds, a spokesman for the United States Navy, said that American analysts had ruled out the possibility that the “hydro-acoustic anomaly,” as he called the explosion, could have been caused by volcanic or seismic activity.
"That was not a natural sound you hear in an ocean environment,” he said.
Commander Reynolds said that despite the bleak news, American rescue personnel were still scouring the area.
“For the United States, this is still a search-and-rescue mission,” he said. “We’re still presuming that they’re alive.”
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