The situation is beyond desperate at this moment.
So far they haven't been able to find the submarine, today was a pretty chaotic day.
It started yesterday with two sources, one being the USN and the other being the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) detecting a "Hydroacustic Anomaly" in the area in which the ARA San Juan was last "seen". There was "Sensitive information under state secret", said by the navy. Around that time, the Chilean Oceanographic ship "Cabo de Hornos" joined the SAR efforts.
Early on this day, Captain Enrique Balbi, the Navy spokesperson, confirmed “a singular event, short, violent, non nuclear, consistent with an explosion” had occurred some 30 miles north of the site the submarine disappeared.
This is terrible news, because if the submarine suffered an explosion, there is almost no way back.
Now, two things remain unresolved.
First, the location of the submarine:
This is where the sub may be located, where the explosion was heard. As you can see, it's almost about to fall down into the abyss, a bit to the west and you might find yourself about 300 meters below the surface, a bit to the east however and the depth increases greatly, 500, 700, 1.000, 3.000...
The sub is definitely not capable of resisting the pressure after 400m, some sources claim that it is as far as 3.000m wich is letal, it would just crush the submarine and kill everyone on board.
That -might- explain why nobody has been able to find the sub yet, could it be there?, crushed at 1.000m?. So far, we don't know.
Another question is what caused the "explosion"?, could it be the batteries?. Many things have been said about them, the Sub had a battery change a couple of years ago when it went through it's mid-life upgrades, but apparently they did not used the "recommended" batteries from Germany but they actually used chinese models, that remains to be clarified though.
While an explosion was recorded and confirmed, the magnitude remains to be known. The forward batteries are right under the crew's sleeping rooms and kitchen The sub is literallly divided in two, there is a "wall" that is made of the same material as the hull that divides it, with a small hatch in the center. The submarine captain reported a "shortcircuit" with the forward batteries but it was "solved", and it went on. If they exploded, and the ship was having most of it's crew sleeping, it could have knocked out a large portion of the crew and rendered it unable to deploy any emergency measure such as a beacon, but since the sub is divided in two, the engine room could have a few crewmembers alive despite the explosion.
The hopes are diminishing, the families yesterday were seen crying and calling the Navy "traitors" as they erupted in anger as Enrique Balbi told them about this before giving information to the public minutes later. I have almost given up hope on the possibility of rescuing them alive, the situation is far too critical for them to survive in such conditions for 8 days.
This is not the Kursk, which was a double-hull monster, this is a rather small sub made in Germany in the 80s that lasted for 30 years. If they are dead, I hope they died quickly in the main explosion, because dying down there waiting to be rescued while oxygen runs out...
It's really really sad.