Chile Forum

True Charles, I forgot about that. And, while they say they run a couple of times a week, that's not always the case. It's a brutal looking ferry also!

Vicki

Approximately 5:30 pm in Futa, six cattle-trucks struck a resounding protest around the Plaza, still ongoing. Trucks from Palena, La Junta, and Futa had hoped to transport local livestock out of the area but were denied for lack of proper paperwork and documents. Should be on the news tonight. The town square was blocked by the trucks, Carabinero vehicles and an Army truck, a large grader and local folks in pickup trucks. Gave the old horns a workout. I look forward to hearing how it worked out. The rain is ceaseless, and has been all day.

And so it goes from Futa.

Could you clarify this? Was the police and army protesting with them?

Interesting food for thought. After everything I read here about Chile, my immediated thoughts about a ferry are "private" vs. "Public". Boats cost a fortune to buy, run and maintain and they have to charge accordingly (if private), which often means transportation costs, make GOODS too expensive for the general populace. So a public ferry subsidised by the government may be the solutiion, unless it is then competeing with some private entrepeneur who haS already invested some huge amount and the government would now be putting that company out of business.
My observation here in the Caribbean, where ferries are our lifeblood, is the private ferries are better maintained and last decades ,but the government Ferry is always broken because the crew are government employees who have job security and do NOTHING about mainteneance, and the boats need frequent replacement (5years) . Here our 18 mile run, passenger public ferry charges $2.00 per person (half that for students and seniors) but are unreliable due to maintenance issues and in the Virgin Islands a similar run between the British and American Virgin islands cost $40.00 on the privately owned boats. That is quite a difference especially when you consider the cost for a family to travel. Here we need to travel for medical care, shopping etc.I'm sure the folk in the south have similar needs.

The private ferries are government subsidized, just not sufficiently to be profitable I believe is the problem or at least they are not putting the money in to running new ferries in those areas. They are government concessions. There are better ferries running from the mainland to Chiloe. Which by the way, it was the president who killed the money to built the bridge across to Chiloe when she came in to office. That would have at least freed up about a dozen good size ferries for other parts of Southern Chile, all things being equal.

I think this is another case of safe promise for the president to make because she will not be in office. That road is just a campaign promise.

here you go, problem solved:
http://www.shiptraders.com/index.php?a=5&b=425

Chile can have a big 200 car ferry in operation to the patagonia by next week for around 10 million US and change. Buy two, and get a crew for free. They likely just spent that on military ships to evacuate Chaiten.

They could have nearly moved the entire town of Chaiten on to a large ferry in one shot. I don't think there are even 200 cars in Chaiten.

The Chilean government has tasked 100 million US just to start the road through Pumalin. That is just the initial study it, expropriate the land, and I don't believe it includes even firing up a bulldozer (if it does, the president is smoking something ).

I have also kind of wondered why Tompkins has never tried it. His yearly legal bill for fighting the government is likely more than one of those ferries.

In other news, the goverment has announced an extension of a ban on a return of people to Chaiten for 3 months because of the danger.

This kind of goes against what was announced yesterday regarding the payments. They government said it would reassess the situation in one month, in terms of providing long-term relief aid to those displaced. They know that no one will be going back for at least 3 months, but they are not going to decide anything for a month in terms of assistance to the people?

We have lost contact with Futa. All phones are down.

We can not reach anyone in futa by cell or phone line. Anyone that has been in contact please PM us ASAP.

Anyone able to make contact with Futa or the area please contact us by email, PM, or call us ASAP!!!!!!!!!

What we know now from the news is that:

Chaiten is 90% under water.

the area outside futa las escalas near the Futa river has been cut off by a land slide.

We have no other information at this time.

Hopefully this is just over reaction.

We just made contact with Futa, and talked to vicki and greg. Their phone service has been out for the last few hours to Futa. Everyone is fine.