Chile Forum

feel good story and cautionary tale:

Chilean rescuers have saved two tourists who got into trouble on an Andean mountain and raised the alarm by calling an emergency number in the US.

The two - an Italian and a Czech - used a satellite device to send their location to a rescue centre in Texas.

Local teams then had to contend with heavy snow, rain and high winds to reach the pair, who were sheltering on the slopes of the Quetrupillan volcano.

After the rescue, the tourists said they were lucky to be alive.

"It was very serious. At times we thought that we were going to die," said Czech Phillip Kunk.

Italian Analissa Lombardo said it was the most frightening experience of her life.

The two were taken a local hospital to be treated for symptoms of hypothermia.
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They entered the national park on Monday, planning to walk along a trail that usually takes five days.

But they got into trouble by the early hours of Friday, and raised the alarm with Texas rescuers.

The Americans then alerted the Chilean authorities, and a rescue team was despatched to the area, near the resort town of Pucon.

The area, near the Argentine border, is popular with adventure tourists.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13180266

PenquistaDeCorazon wrote:feel good story and cautionary tale:

Chilean rescuers have saved two tourists who got into trouble on an Andean mountain and raised the alarm by calling an emergency number in the US.

The Chilean Navy has made a name for itself in a significant number of recent rescues in the Southern Ocean. And then going back in history there was Pardo's participation in the splendid rescue of Shackleton's crew. Piloto Pardo is a bit of a hero down here. There is a street named after him here in Natales.





In 2007 the Chilean Navy won the "Valor at Sea" rescue award for their operations in saving the passengers of the vessel "Explorer" which struck an iceberg and was sinking near Chilean Antarctica.

Lots of good reading on the history of Chilean Navy rescue operations.

Yea, one thing you have to say is Chile is fairly well equipped with teams for extreme rescues, and they do a good job. What you don't hear a lot about are things like the emergency flight for life type evacuations that take place in areas such as the Patagonia all the time. People in the campos depend on the military and local bush pilots to fly them out in the middle of storms in the mountains and so on. Happens everyday.

This must have been a SPOT their monitoring station is in Texas, go to know as I was carrying one all over southern Chile this past summer. I know it was uploading my I’m ok transmissions.

Yea, we had one in the plane during the earthquake flights, that was why I was guessing it was a SPOT system from the descriptions in the news.