Thousands of truck drivers transporting goods between Mercosur countries were stranded in recent days in the Andes Mountains due to a snowstorm that left roads and vehicles covered in ice and forced the governments of Chile and Argentina to close a good part of access between the two countries.
This Friday (15), the Twitter of the Cristo Redentor international crossing — a tunnel of just over 3 kilometers that connects nations, closed for a week due to bad weather — released a video in which the white roads, covered with snow, can be seen. .
The situation should not change in the coming days: the National Meteorological Service of Argentina warned on Thursday (14) that the forecast is for recurrent and intense snowfall. The accumulation of snow can reach one meter in the Mendoza region.
After driving 1,800 kilometers and delivering a load of paper reel in Santiago, capital of Chile, driver Márcio Rodrigues Alves was on his way back to Uruguaiana, in Rio Grande do Sul, on Saturday (11), when on a stretch from the mountain range the weather turned sharply—the weak sun gave way to a heavy snowstorm.
“And there we [os caminhoneiros] we stayed. We stayed two days inside the trucks in the mountain range. The temperature started to drop more.” In his 15 years in the profession, the driver says he has witnessed a similar blizzard situation only once, in 2008, in the same region now, a stretch that extends for 40 kilometers.
He estimates the number of vehicles trapped by snow on the Chilean side at 295, with truck drivers from Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. In Argentina, 2,800 trucks are unable to continue their journey, according to local press reports.
Rodrigues reports that he didn’t eat on the days he couldn’t get out of the ride, because the very low temperature froze the gas he would use to cook, from a food box in the vehicle.
His rescue and that of his colleagues arrived by the Chilean Army in the early hours of Sunday (11) to Monday (12), when the doors of his truck were already covered by snow. Rodrigues says that soldiers scraped the ice in order to open the door and take him out, grabbed by the legs and arms, just before dawn.
“It was 15°C below zero. I couldn’t feel my feet or legs anymore”, he reports.
The truck drivers were taken by the army to a shelter in the small town of Los Andes, 80 kilometers from Santiago, where they received blankets, hygiene products and meals. And there they are until now, waiting for the weather to improve in the coming days so they can continue their journey.
