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ARGENTINA’S NAVY CONFIRMED yesterday that an unusual noise heard in the Atlantic near the last known position of a missing submarine appeared to be an explosion, dashing the last hopes of finding the vessel’s 44 crew members alive.
Relatives of the missing sailors reacted with grief and anger to the news after holding out hope since the sub was reported overdue at its Mar del Plata base on November 17, two days after the explosion.
“An anomalous, singular, short, violent and non-nuclear event consistent with an explosion,” occurred shortly after the submarine’s last communication, navy spokesman Captain Enrique Balbi told a news conference in Buenos Aires.
After days of false hopes, some of the relatives said the navy had withheld information about the sub and lied to them over the past week.
“I feel cheated,” said Itati Leguizamon, whose husband German Suarez was a sonar operator on the ARA San Juan.
They did not tell us they died. But they tell us they are three thousand meters (9,800 feet) deep.
“They lied to us,” said Leguizamon, a lawyer.
A sobbing Jessica Gopar, whose husband was an electrician aboard the San Juan, said “they just told us that the submarine exploded”.
She spoke as she came out from the sub’s base.
“He was the love of my life, engaged seven years before we got married,” Gopar said of her husband, Fernando Santilli.
And how can I tell my son that he no longer has a father?
Underwater sounds detected in the first days of the search by two Argentine search ships were determined to originate from a sea creature, not the vessel. Satellite signals were also determined to be false alarms.
The San Juan, a 34-year-old German-built diesel-electric submarine, had reported a battery problem on 15 November and said it was diverting to Mar del Plata, but did not send a distress signal, according to the navy.
Balbi admitted on Wednesday that the situation for the sub and its crew appeared to be worsening.
However, he refused to speculate at that point on the origin of what he initially described as a “hydro-acoustic anomaly” detected in the ocean almost three hours after the sub’s communication and 50 kilometres north of its last known position.
Balbi explained that information about the unusual noise only became available on Wednesday after being relayed by the United States and “after all the information from all agencies reporting such hydro-acoustic events was reviewed”.
Explaining the lack of debris on the surface, Balbi said “nothing will end up floating to the surface” because a submarine “implodes”.
Gustavo Mauvecin, director of the Center for Hyperbaric Medicine at Mar del Plata, said hydrogen “is always an issue with submarines with electric engines”.
The San Juan “has 500 tons of lead-acid batteries, which release hydrogen if there is an overcharge in the battery. Hydrogen in contact with oxygen is explosive”.
An explosion ‘so violent’
“In my opinion, after an explosion like that, it’s difficult for there to be survivors,” a former submarine commander told AFP.
The newspaper La Nacion said one hypothesis is that there was a short circuit in the batteries. It said this would explain the sub’s failure to communicate and the fact that it did not have time to send off a distress signal.
The commander said a problem with batteries, as the sub had reported, could in fact cause a blast.
“A severe problem with batteries might generate hydrogen. Hydrogen above a certain percentage is explosive,” said the commander who requested anonymity.
Horacio Tobias, former chief of diving for the San Juan, said it “was so violent that they would not have had time to realize what happened”.
The San Juan would have had enough oxygen for its crew to survive underwater in the South Atlantic for seven days since its last contact, according to officials. That time had elapsed by 7.30am GMT Wednesday.
Argentina is leading an air-and-sea search to try to still find the sub. It is getting help from several countries now including Brazil, Britain, Chile, Colombia, France, Germany, Peru, Russia, the United States and Uruguay.
Russia was the latest navy to volunteer help, sending an oceanographic research ship as the operation shifted from rescue to recovery.
The Russian defense ministry said the Yantar was steaming to the area from the western coast of Africa on the orders of President Vladimir Putin.
The weeklong search has focused on the sub’s last known position, around 200 miles off the Argentine coast, but has been hampered by bad weather.
Putin offered “words of support over the situation with the San Juan submarine” in a phone call to Argentine President Mauricio Macri late on Wednesday, the Kremlin said.
US President Donald Trump offered his support, tweeting: “May God be with them and the people of Argentina!”
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What is never mentioned in the media is that Michael Martin and his party bankrupted this country with no growth for 10 years. Had to beg for money from the IMF. All because of their housing policy, etc I haven’t forgotten has any one else ?
@Jimmy Donovan: FG would have done exactly the same if they had been in government.
Their 2007 election manifesto was similar to FF except they also promised to scrap the introduction of eircodes
@Thomas Sheridan: They also wanted to reduce stamp duty which would’ve put more money in developers pockets. Same party different name
@Eddie Garvey: The dogs in the streets know FFG are one party. By calling it two, they get twice the jollies!
@Jimmy Donovan: I haven’t forgotten about Sf screaming across the dail that every type of spending should be increased because ‘the country is awash with money’…..we would have been in a way worse situation if that lot have have been in…..I haven’t forgotten about that any one else?
@John Paul: SF hasn’t spent one cent of government money in this country. Each man, woman, and child currently ows 43k per person. Interest on this is 14 million euros per day.
@Jimmy Donovan: have a read of this article from 2001 by Greg Palast. The interview & verified documents are from Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank.
If people think FF or FG or any other political party, in Ireland, have been running Ireland for the last 67-70 years, they’re sadly mistaken.
@Mr Inbetween: maybe read the linked article before stating “facts”
Ireland has not been an independent country since joining the EEC
@Jimmy Donovan: Public Sector greed also had a lot to do with the Government going bust back in the day.
@John Paul: must look for your comment on the childrens hospital article.
What I would love to know is how such a huge gap between housing required and actual supply has been allowed to develop
We now have a census every 5 years & we have known since the 1990s that the population is going up.
Back in simpler times it would have somebody’s job to ensure enough housing was being built
Now we are tripping over ourselves with experts and reports, but nobody puts their hand up on such a fundamental issue.
And is if that’s not enough we learn that E 1 billion a year is now being spent on accommodation for asylum seekers
This is not a formula for a happy contented country
@Gerry Kelly: the gap is there because it is a controlled market, and those influencing control are interested in making the biggest profit possible from each unit (developers) aided by incompetent govt and govt who are completely competent but rigging the whole thing for their benefit (they or their close allies are in the property game)
@Eddie Garvey: 100% exactly what I’ve been saying for years. The public are being hoodwinked by a combination of the banks/government/media and developers for the last 10 years approx. The shortages of ‘to buy’ and more recently ‘to rent’ is by design and will end in disaster for Joe soaps nationwide
@Gerry Kelly: Building stopped completely in 2008 but the population kept growing.
@Mick Duvanny: and they conveniently forgot to do their job of constructing social housing since ?
Over 1 billion spent on asylum seekers last year.
More than half of new PPS numbers in Ireland were issued to people from outside the EU last year.
Non nationals account for 36% of those in long term Job Seekers Allowance. 90% rise from 2019.
Highest number of working visas for Australia issued to young Irish people in 2023 since the height of the crash in 2009. Never mind all the Irish going to work in Canada, UK, Dubai etc.
We are a small country on the western edge of Europe. We cannot take all these people whilst our own leave. This is population replacement before our very eyes.
6 murders in 6 weeks all involving foreign nationals.
Ireland doesn’t have a housing problem. Ireland has an immigration problem
@JagTune: Exactly right
@JagTune: very well said. Be ready to be called all sorts of names including racist just because you point the reality.
@Mr “JonnieBoy” Johnson: Do you really care if the race-baiters call you names?
@Housing Hunger Games: this is the same public that voted in Martin and Harris on a first count ,I wouldn’t put alot of stock in the brain power of the Irish voting public at the minute.
Fact is we have a massive problem,these people are not like the polish who all appeared at the start of the boom,they have no intention of working in factories or building sites,massive dole merchants and feck all else
Brown field sites could be brought into use overnight if the political will was there, we saw during covid how quickly things can be done with emergency legislation.
Didn’t they say that the last time and the time before that and the time before that.
all fine and well but will Lowry approve
@Gerry Ryan: depends on if he can sell a discounted property to his kids through a shelf company. Sorry, that was some Lowrey guy, I get confused sometimes
@Gerry Ryan: Depends if he has an interest in it, like the LIDL that was built during Covid when not one house was allowed to be built.
After engorging themselves with salary increases.
What about easing the co.councils ban on mobile a nd chalet type homes in large gardens in country? Remember the man Tipperary Council took to court for housing himself in one…on his own land He is not the only one. Recently the same to man who housed his relations in Limerick. Many could house a son or daughter in their instead of them paying huge rents,miles away from elderly parents
@Helena Camella Cummins: There is no land in this country that the state doesn’t own, read the constitution and he didn’t bother getting plannjng permission, the part that a lot like to forget. I mean that is the first thing to do before building anything.
Housing for all is nonsense. No country can house 8 billion people
So we’ll have a 5k fine with near zero enforcement. Given the money to be made in short term lets, this will just be seen as a cost/liability and ignored
This is just the same meaningless talking in circles around the issue of housing as always, while actually doing nothing to solve it.
The brass neck of these absolute muppets and the contempt that they show to the people of Ireland beggers belief. They now say that they need time to draft a plan to deal with the housing crisis and a response to it????
They are acting like they didn’t just spend 4 years in government supposedly addressing the exact same housing crisis????
But now they say that have to start from square one, and the people of Ireland are going to just swallow this rubbish all over again?
Nobody likes the idea of lazy people that don’t want to work ever, getting low cost social housing while milking the system, but we are beyond that as a nation.
Because families in which both people are working full-time cannot afford a place to live, those people need access to social housing now, but its not only them, young people are facing the prospect of being homeless or under threat of homelessness regardless of how hard they work to build a future for themselves, older people on pensions are also struggling to pay for accommodation, is this what we want our government to deliver to the people of the country, more excuses, grand plans that deliver nothing and meaningless soundbites?
There is only one answer to the housing crisis, building social housing now on a massive scale.
Same course of action that crashed the economy as that’s there only plan. Protect their business lobbyists friends that roll up every year that control the land banks
I would recommend more tax breaks for the buyers and keep tax breaks for the developers. What would I know, I’m not on a TDs salary and live in the real world.
“Housing for all plan”…heard that years ago…yaaaaaaaaawn.
Yet again our so called Government and opposition are so full of sh**.
Keep it simple – no short term letting without Planning Permission . Enforce it correctly with huge fines for owner and operators like Air B&B and Booking.com. – this means the sector will settle down and inflated prices all round will be more controlled!
FG is
FG
Stop talking and DO something radical, that does NOT mean cancel the RPZs, bring in much tighter controls so that our own citizens can afford to live properly.
have your say