Argentine icebreaker fire survivors home

The first group of the 296 survivors of a fire aboard an Argentine navy icebreaker returned Thursday to an emotional homecoming, with relatives cheering and hugging them after their ordeal.

A raging fire aboard Argentina's only icebreaker forced crew and passengers to abandon ship off southern Argentina on Tuesday night. Many passed several chilly hours in lifeboats before fishing boats and an oil tanker rescued them early Wednesday.

Speaking to survivors who arrived by transport plane at a military base in suburban Buenos Aires, Defense Minister Nilda Garre praised the ship's captain, Guillermo Tarapow, for his handling of the crisis, preventing serious injury.

"The safety of those aboard comes first and foremost," Garre said.

The fire broke out in the Almirante Irizar's auxiliary generator compartment. Tarapow ordered all aboard to take to the 24 lifeboats after the flames became uncontrollable.

The icebreaker was 140 miles off Puerto Madryn in Patagonia waters at the time.

"The lifeboats were knocking about, and we were out on the waters just waiting until one of the fishing vessels picked us up. There was a lot of wind and waves," said one survivor, Jorge Ayola, who hugged a young son and his wife.

Ayola and others reported minor sprains getting into the bobbing lifeboats.

He said it was painful to watch the fire gain hold of the ship: "As it spread, people where throwing bucks of water but it was out of control."

Other flights carrying survivors were to arrive here and in other Argentine cities later Thursday.

Garre said specialists on three navy ships had reached the scene and boarded the Almirante Irizar to examine the damage from the fire, since extinguished. She said they were preparing to tow the ship to a navy base at Puerto Belgrano, some 450 miles south of Buenos Aires.

"The Irizar is key to our strategy in Antarctica and now the repairs will begin," she added, acknowledging the fire posed "great difficulties" for its missions to the icy continent.

Authorities did not give a cause for the fire.

The Almirante Irizar was built in Finland and acquired by the Argentine navy in 1978. Measuring 390 feet in length, it has played key roles in Argentina's annual supply runs to Antarctica in the southern hemisphere summer that begins in December.

The icebreaker had just returned from a four-month campaign that left some dozen Antarctic scientific bases resupplied and brought home scientists and military officers stationed there.