LOS ANGELES (Chile), May 21: At least 41 soldiers were feared dead on Saturday as rescuers searched a fourth day for mostly teenage troops lost in a blizzard during a military exercise in the Andes. Grieving families began to identify the 14 bodies that had been found and brought to an army base in the southern Chilean city of Los Angeles. Many bitterly blamed the army for the deaths on the Antuco volcano near the border with Argentina.
Rescuers were still searching for 27 still missing, most of them teenage draftees who enlisted just one month ago and went into the mountains on a basic training exercise without gear for the early-winter snow storm. “I’m convinced they are dead,” Army Commander in Chief Juan Cheyre said.
He dismissed a handful of officers over the incident and ordered an internal military investigation as well as a civilian one. The weather improved after several days of snow, and helicopters were bringing off the mountain the 112 survivors who had been trapped in a shelter since Wednesday.
“We expect to have them out this morning. They will get medical check ups and then we’ll get them back with their families,” an army spokesman told Bio Bio radio.
President Ricardo Lagos declared three days of national mourning and was expected to travel to the area after giving his annual address to Congress on Saturday morning. At least one radio station interrupted his speech to read out the names of the missing troops.
Cheyre, who went part way up the mountain some 600kms southeast of Santiago to bring down the first body, blamed the tragedy on officers who ordered hundreds of soldiers on an annual mountain drill to leave shelter during the storm.
“There was negligence and imprudence,” Cheyre told reporters. He said the army has performed the exercise at this time of year for decades and never been hit by a big storm. The search began on Wednesday after more than 400 members of a regiment from a base in Los Angeles were hit by the storm. Hundreds of troops were able to hike out or hole up in shelters, but low temperatures and limited visibility in falling snow hampered the search.
Defence Minister Jaime Ravinet said only one company in the regiment had enough protective gear for a storm. —Reuters