Hope for missing submarine as possible signal detected
Apossible signal has been detected from the submarine missing with 44 people on board. The noise was heard in the South Atlantic about 220 miles (354km) from the Argentine coast and at a depth of about 650 feet (198 meters), metro. co.uk wrote.
Fears are growing for the sub, as if it hasn’t surfaced it will be running out of air.
Storms complicated a search effort after it reported an electrical problem in the South Atlantic last week.
It had been headed back to base but didn’t return when expected.
More than a dozen boats and aircraft from Argentina, the US, the UK, Chile and Brazil have joined the search effort.
Gabriel Galeazzi, a naval commander, told reporters that the submarine had come up from the depths and reported an electrical malfunction before it disappeared 268 miles off the coast.
‘The submarine surfaced and reported a malfunction, which is why its ground command ordered it to return to its naval base at Mar del Plata,’ he said.
The malfunction did not necessarily cause an emergency, Galeazzi added. The craft was navigating normally, underwater, at a speed of five knots toward Mar del Plata when it was last heard from, he said.
Crew members’ relatives gathered at the Mar del Plata naval base, waiting for news. Five psychologists and a psychiatrist have been sent to the base to support them.
The psychiatrist Enrique Stein told reporters, “The families are holding up well. The word ‘hope’ is still being used.”
A signal had had been detected on Saturday and the government had thought they were probably from the submarine. But the ARA San Juan in fact sent its last signal on Wednesday, navy spokesman Enrique Balbi said.
The calls that were detected ‘did not correspond to the satellite phone of the submarine San Juan’, he said on Monday, adding that the craft had oxygen for seven days.
After that, he said, it would have to surface or get near the surface to replenish air supply.