Buenos Aires, 4 mar ( EFE).-the Perito Moreno glacier, in the South of Argentina, finally completed today its break-up, in the middle of a storm and when the darkness and rain had conspired to frighten the hundreds of tourists who looked anxious Show.
Blasting and cyclical breaking the ice dam that separates the channel of the ice floes of Lago Argentino and the arm Rico occurred around 0400 local time (07.00 GMT), when virtually no remaining people in the viewpoints of the Los Glaciares National Park, in the southern province of Santa Cruz.
“The ROAR was great but occurred at a time when it rained of torrential.” “There was almost no one, only our colleagues in the National Park that followed the process from a shelter”, told Carlos Corvalán, Mayor of the nature reserve.
Corvalán recalled that the glacier “broke at night, in 2006” and pointed out that camera that transmitted the process of rupture on the web received this Saturday, when awaiting the show with great anticipation, 1.8 million visitors.
The process of rupture, which was started last Wednesday, is caused by the pressure of the water on the ice dam, which starts to crack into a hole in an arc that weakens it and ends up collapsing.
Latest ruptures occurred in 1988, 2004, 2006 and 2008.
Because of the phenomenon in recent days significantly grew the number of visitors to the Los Glaciares National Park, in the summer season usually about 2,500 people per day.
The Perito Moreno, of some 200 square kilometers of extension, is located on the cordillera de Los Andes, natural boundary between Argentina and Chile, and is one of the few in the world that maintains stable, without back as a result of global warming.
The front of the glacier measures about 2.8 kilometers long and has an altitude of about 70 meters above the level of the waters of the Lake, although the wall of ice arrives at his deathbed. EFE
