Explaining the Chilean Army Tragedy

The Antuco Volcano was the site of the Chilean armed forces’ worst peacetime disaster last weekend. Thirty-five young, inexperienced recruits died after they were sent to the mountain while a fierce snowstorm was beginning. The media had to figure out how to show the place, as Emol.com did (Spanish) with a satellite photo, or to explain the local political circumstances, as the New York Times did.

But for the Chilean people, who live in a country with 3,000 miles of snowy mountains (the Andes), but without snow on their relatively near cities, there was a missed piece that was well covered by La tercera.cl (Spanish). It was the medical effects of low temperatures, which are well explained with a Flash animation, where you slide a bar on a thermometer and see what happens to the human body.