Search for MH370: Underwater vehicle Bluefin-21 deployed to find plane's wreckage

To sink underwater by the height of Britain’s tallest tower would still only cover 7 per cent of the descent to the floor of the Indian Ocean, 4,500 metres down, where the black boxes from Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 are presumed to lie.

Even at those 300 metre comparative shallows, all is dark. The furthest anyone has dived in a protective suit is a little over twice that. And only a handful of manned submarines have gone more than half the depth of the ocean being searched, underlining the scale of the challenge facing search teams.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, said on April 11 that naval teams leading the international hunt were confident that they now knew the position of the black box flight recorder to within some kilometres.

But Angus Houston, the search co-ordinator, issued a statement saying there had been no major breakthrough. A possible signal detected on Thursday by Australian air force planes was ruled not to have been a fifth ping — diminishing hopes that the black boxes from the missing Boeing 777 were still signalling, beyond the cusp of their expected 30-day battery life. The joint agency co-ordination centre said a 46,713 square kilometre area of the Indian Ocean was still being searched for the plane, which went missing with 239 people aboard on March 8.

When transmissions from the underwater locator beacons cease, that search will become harder, but not impossible — Air France flight 447’s black boxes were found two years after signals stopped. But every ping detected allows search teams to triangulate further, rapidly narrowing the possible location.

The next likely stage, according to Prof Ian Wright, director of science and technology at the National Oceanography Centre, would be a coarse mapping of the sea floor using ships’ sonar. This would provide a base map for underwater robots. The same autonomous underwater vehicles found the AF447 wreckage at 3,900m. The ocean floor now being searched is 600m deeper still — a depth at which, in an apt analogy supplied by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the crushing weight of water is the equivalent of one person carrying 50 jumbo jets. This is at the limits of the Bluefin-21 robot, a 5.3 metre yellow torpedo-shaped machine which can create a high-resolution map of the seabed through sonar pulses.

While the manufacturers are confident it can work in such an extreme environment, William O’Halloran, of Bluefin Robotics, told the BBC: “To conduct surveys and searches in the subsea world, things move at about three nautical miles an hour — not very fast.” At that rate, it would take the Bluefin six years to map the search area.

Despite the greater depth, the comparatively flat Indian Ocean floor could be easier to search than the area around the mid-Atlantic ridge where AF447 was eventually found. Wright says: “That was a very young sea floor — it was very difficult to image that wreckage using sonar systems because of the rough topography and lack of sediment cover.” In the current search, the echo sounding systems should be much more effective in detecting anything unusual and providing a high resolution image. Wright says: “You would see wreckage or not. Then you would deploy an ROV.” The ROV is a remotely operated underwater vehicle that can film, scan and, crucially, pick up things from the seabed. It is tethered to a ship by an 8,000 metre cable, which not only holds the weight of the vehicle but powers it and contains fibre optics to transmit instructions and receive data.

The Remora, which can function at 6,000 metres, was used in the salvage of AF447 and other crashed planes, as well as the inspection of the Titanic. Its two hydraulic arms could either tie debris to a winch or place things in a sample basket, ideally including the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder.

While the robot takes care of business on the ocean floor, work remains hard on the surface. “It can run for about 24 hours. It’s a bit like being on a space mission — you’ve got a wall of TV cameras and controls. You’re talking about 50 tons of equipment and a team of six to eight people to run and maintain the ROV.” The impending southern hemisphere winter may further delay operations. The extent of the recovery will also be affected by just what damage was done on impact. While sections of fuselage have remained after some crashes — and the tailfin of AF447 was retrieved almost intact — other planes have been utterly destroyed. The investigation into Swissair flight 111, that crashed in 1998 off the coast of Nova Scotia, recovered around 2m fragments from relatively shallow waters. Decisions on recovery will be shaped by the human tragedy of MH370. The authorities are now working with the assumption that somewhere, possibly trapped within the wreckage or elsewhere in the ocean, are the remains of the 239 passengers and crew who took off for Kuala Lumpur to Beijing five weeks ago. In the wake of AF447, one of the questions that divided grieving families was whether the deceased should be left in the ocean. Just over half of the bodies were eventually brought to the surface. In the Swissair crash, most could only be identified by dental records or DNA traces.

The black boxes of a plane are made of superstrength components, designed to withstand extreme temperature, shock and the high pressure of the ocean depths — but Swissair investigators needed to recover wreckage to establish how fire had caused that crash. A cockpit voice recorder only stores the last two hours of conversation — long after the crucial manoeuvres apparently took place on MH370.

It takes two hours for the Bluefin-21 to reach the sea floor. At walking pace, it will then search for 16 hours, before taking another two hours to return to the surface. It then takes four hours to download the data the vehicle has detected.

The vehicle is equipped with side-scan sonar which transmits an active pulse. This produces a high-resolution three-dimensional map of the sea floor.

Meanwhile, ADV Ocean Shield detected an ‘‘oil slick’’ in the range of its search zone on Sunday, Mr Houston said.

However, it will be days before the origins of the oil can be investigated by experts on shore.

As many as 11 military aircraft, one civilian jet and 15 ships were searching an area about 47,644 square kilometres for the missing flight on Monday.

There have been no acoustic detections picked up in the underwater search area since Tuesday, JACC has confirmed.

The centre of the search zone is 2200 kilometres north-west of Perth, Western Australia, which has become the headquarters for the recovery operation.

Although the search is now in its fifth week, not a single piece of physical evidence has been located to confirm the whereabouts of MH370.

The Bluefin-21 Artemis autonomous underwater vehicle can operate at a depth of 4.5 kilometres and travels at a maximum speed of 4.5 knots, or less than nine kilometres an hour.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott gave the last indication of the underwater search zone, of about 2000 square kilometres, when speaking to Chinese media on Saturday.

Under optimal conditions the submersible can complete a 25-hour mission if it maintains a speed of three knots, according to its manufacturer, Bluefin Robotics.

It has been more than a week since the batteries from the flight’s two black box beacons was due to expire and six days since signals consistent with aircraft black box ‘‘pings’’ were last detected.

On Saturday in Beijing Mr Abbott said the search was still focused on an area measuring 40 kilometres by 50 kilometres in size.

He said search authorities had hoped to reduce the area to within one kilometre before deploying the Bluefin-21.

On Monday, Mr Houston stopped short of saying he believed the batteries were dead, but he has previously said the submersible would not be dropped to the ocean floor until there was absolutely no hope the black boxes would emit another signal.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, with 239 people on board, vanished after mysteriously changing course during a flight from Beijing to Kuala Lumpur on March 8.

It is hoped the plane’s two black boxes: a flight data recorder, and a cockpit voice recorder will hold vital information about what happened in those final hours.

Earlier today Malaysian authorities revealed they were uncertain about what to do with the black boxes from Flight 370 if they are located and brought to the surface.

The country’s Attorney-General, Abdul Ghani, has flown to London to consult with the United Nations Civil Aviation Organisation and other experts about who should get custody of the boxes.

Although Malaysia is the head of the investigation under international law, the government has called on international experts from countries including the United States and Britain to assist with the investigation.

As the suspected final resting place of MH370 falls within Australia’s search and rescue zone, Australia has been the lead agency for coordinating the search Indian Ocean search effort

Monday 14 April 2014

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/robots-search-sea-bed-for-mh370/article5908527.ece

http://www.smh.com.au/national/search-for-mh370-underwater-vehicle-bluefin21-deployed-to-find-planes-wreckage-20140414-36n2k.html

Victims of Pinochet government reburied in Chile after 40 years

The remains of six men have been reburied in Chile more than 40 years after they were killed by the military government of Augusto Pinochet.

Their bodies were discovered in an unmarked grave in 1992.

The men were among dozens of people killed by a military unit in late 1973, just weeks after General Pinochet came to power in a coup.

His officials flew around the country in helicopters, and executed political prisoners by firing squad.

The men - Carlos Berger, Carlos Escobedo, Luis Moreno, Hernan Moreno, Mario Arguelles and Jeronimo Carpanchay - were killed in the northern Chilean city of Calama.

Mr Berger, a lawyer and journalist, had been arrested on 11 September 1973 after refusing to broadcast a government message at the radio station where he worked.

His and the other men's remains were identified after extensive forensic tests in Europe, and finally buried in a ceremony at the main cemetery in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

Caravan of Death

The six men were murdered by what became known as the Caravan of Death, in one of the most notorious episodes of the Pinochet government.

The General sent the "delegation" of military men to Chile's provincial towns because he was reportedly annoyed that some commanders there had been "soft" on political opponents.

The Caravan of Death is thought to have killed 97 opponents of the military coup.

The BBC's Gideon Long in Chile says the military wanted to punish its opponents, but also strike fear into the Chilean people.

According to official figures, 40,018 people were victims of human rights abuses during the 1973-1990 Pinochet government and 3,065 were killed or disappeared.

Augusto Pinochet died in hospital on 10 December 2006, aged 91.

Monday 14 April 2014

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-27014505

36 reported dead after bus hits parked truck along Mexico highway

A passenger bus slammed into a broken-down truck and burst into flames, killing at least 36 people Sunday in southern Mexico, the Veracruz state government reported.

Both state and federal officials said that four people survived the crash, which occurred shortly after midnight in the southeastern state of Veracruz.

A communique from the state civil defence agency said the victims were business people from the region who were travelling from the Tabasco state capital of Villahermosa to Mexico City.

The agency’s emergency director, Ricardo Maza Limon, said the victims apparently burned to death inside the bus, which was so badly charred that the tires melted and the markings on its sides were unreadable.

The federal highway department, which earlier gave the death toll as 34, said the three-axle bus was on a highway in the area of Acayucan when it struck a five-axle tractor-trailer owned by a milk protein company that had broken down and was parked along the roadside.


Via Twitter, Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto sent a message of condolences to the families of those who died.

The state government of Tabasco said it was setting up an attention centre for the families of the victims, some of whom were suffering from nervous crises. The centre’s operations co-ordinator, Dr. Teresa Hernandez Marin, said the centre will provide social workers, psychologists and psychiatrists to help people.

Hernandez said experts will start identifying the bodies overnight, using DNA tests when necessary.

Bus crashes and road accidents occur frequently in Mexico. In 2012, at least 43 people died when a truck hit a bus in Veracruz, and a couple of months later more than 30 more were killed in an accident in Guerrero state.

Monday 14 April 2014

http://globalnews.ca/news/1268562/36-reported-dead-after-bus-hits-parked-truck-along-mexico-highway/

S. Korea repatriates body of sailor to N. Korea

South Korea handed over to North Korea the body of a man found dead off South Korea's southern coast where a Mongolian cargo ship carrying North Korean sailors sank earlier this month, an official said Monday.

The repatriation took place at the border village of Panmunjom inside a military buffer zone that separates the two Koreas, according to the government official.

The move came three days after North Korea confirmed the man's identity. On Friday, South Korea asked North Korea to help identify the man by sending photos of the body through a dialogue channel at Panmunjom.

South Korea also informed the North on Friday that it had ended the operation to search for 10 other sailors who remained missing.

The 4,300-ton ship went down in rough seas 76 kilometers off South Korea's southern port city of Yeosu on April 4 on its way to Shanghai, China, from the north's eastern port city of Cheongjin with a cargo of 6,500 steel products.

Of the ship's 16 crew members, all North Koreans, two were found dead and three were rescued soon after the accident, the South Korean Coast Guard said.

On April 6, South Korea repatriated the three surviving North Korean sailors to their homeland along with the bodies of two others who died.

Monday 14 April 2014

http://english.yonhapnews.co.kr/national/2014/04/14/7/0301000000AEN20140414003900315F.html

Fire rages through Valparaiso, killing 12 and destroying at least 2,000 homes

A raging fire leaped from hilltop to hilltop in this historic Chilean port city and stubbornly burned out of control in places more than 24 hours later, killing 12 people and destroying at least 2,000 homes. More than 10,000 people were evacuated, including more than 200 female inmates at a prison.

With hot dry winds stoking the embers, some of the fires that authorities had declared contained broke out again as a second night fell.

The blaze began Saturday afternoon in a forested ravine next to ramshackle housing on one of Valparaiso’s 42 hilltops, and spread quickly as hot ash rained down over wooden houses and narrow streets that lack municipal water systems. Electricity failed as the fire grew, with towering flames turning the night sky orange over a darkening, ravaged horizon.

Neighborhoods on six hilltops were reduced to ashes, including one hill several blocks from Chile’s parliament building. Flames later broke out again on at least two of those hills, burning out of control and threatening to consume other nearby neighborhoods.

“It’s a tremendous tragedy. This could be the worst fire in the city’s history,” President Michelle Bachelet said as 20 helicopters and planes dropped water on hot spots.

The fire destroyed at least 2,000 houses by Sunday evening, and the death toll rose to 12, Interior Minister Rodrigo Penailillo said. Authorities warned that the toll could rise once the fires cool enough for them to search for bodies. Patricio Bustos, who directs the national forensics service, said DNA tests would be needed to identify some of the remains. More than 500 people were treated at hospitals, mostly for smoke inhalation.

It was already the worst fire to hit the picturesque seaside city of 250,000 people since 1953, when 50 people were killed and every structure was destroyed on several of the city’s hills.

The fires were contained to the hills, but Bachelet declared the entire city a catastrophe zone, putting Chile’s military in charge of maintaining order.

While 1,250 firefighters, police and forest rangers battled the blaze, 2,000 Chilean sailors in combat gear patrolled streets to maintain order and prevent looting.

“The people of Valparaiso have courage, have strength and they aren’t alone,” said Bachelet, who canceled a planned trip to Argentina and Uruguay this week.

Valparaiso has a vibrant port and is home to Chile’s national legislature, but it owes its status as a UNESCO World Heritage Site to its colorful architecture, with neighborhoods hugging hills so steep that people use staircases and cable cars to reach their homes.

Unfortunately, many homes in the densely populated poorer areas above the city center were built without proper water or natural gas supplies, and many streets are too narrow for fire trucks to enter.

“We are too vulnerable as a city. We have been the builders and architects of our own danger,” Valparaiso Mayor Jorge Castro said Sunday in an interview with Chile’s 24H channel.

Chile’s emergency response system generated automatic phone calls to each house in danger as the mandatory evacuations expanded. Many people stuffed their cars with possessions after getting these calls, and streets quickly became impassible. Water trucks and firefighters were stuck downhill as people abandoned their vehicles and ran. Some carried television sets and others took canisters of natural gas, fearing an explosion if flames reached their homes.

With so many hills aflame, water was in short supply even in established neighborhoods downhill. A water emergency was declared, cutting off non-essential supplies.

Shelters were overflowing. Bachelet toured some and announced that on Monday she would meet with each of her ministers to hear what they are is doing in response.

“The situation is dramatic, but help is already arriving,” she said.

Maria Elizabeth Diaz, eight months pregnant and trying to rest with her two sons in a shelter set up in Valparaiso’s Greek School, said she had been hesitant to flee her home in Cerro Las Canas when she first learned that the hilltop above her was on fire.

“I didn’t want to move because I was afraid they’d rob me, but I had to flee when I saw the fire was coming down the hill,” she said. “I lost everything. Now I’ve been ordered to rest because I was having contractions. My little one knows that he can’t arrive quite yet.”

Another evacuee, Erica Gonzalez, 74, said her daughter and some neighbors had to carry her to safety because the fire burned her wheelchair.

“I was left in the street. My house was completely burned, and that of my daughter a block away,” she said, visibly upset as she hugged a grandchild.

Some people returned home Sunday to discover total destruction.

“It’s frightening, everything is burned,” said Francisca Granados, who had spent the night with friends in the neighboring city of Vina del Mar.

Thick clouds of smoke surrounded the city prison, where nine pregnant inmates were transferred to a detention facility in the nearby city of Quillota. Another 204 female inmates were being evacuated to a sports arena. More than 2,700 male inmates will remain at the prison for now, prison guard commander Tulio Arce said.

Monday 14 April 2014

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/14/world/fire-rages-through-chile-killing-12-and-destroying-at-least-2000-homes/