Staff from destroyed Antarctic base to fly home

Evacuees from Brazil's destroyed Antarctic research base were set to fly home on Sunday as the government assessed the extensive damage caused by a fire that also killed two navy personnel and injured another.

A Brazilian Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft was to pick up the 32 civilians and 12 navy personnel in Chile and fly them back to Brazil, officials said.

The blaze swept through a room housing energy generators of Brazil's Comandante Ferraz research base located in Admiralty Bay, King George Island, near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.

"All the central core of the base, where the installations were concentrated, was lost. The exact extent of what occurred still needs to be determined, but the assessment is that we really lost virtually everything," Defence Minister Celso Amorim said late Saturday.

"It's an irreparable loss," the daily O Estado de Sao Paulo quoted Yocie Valentin, a Brazilian expert in charge of scientific work in Antarctica, as saying Sunday.

The base, which was established in 1984, conducts biological science research focused on coastal and shelf marine ecosystems.

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation said on its website that scientists at the base were conducting studies on the effects of climate change in Antarctica and their impact on the planet, in addition to research on marine life and the atmosphere.

President Dilma Rousseff vowed that the base would be rebuilt and Amorim said plans for the reconstruction would begin Monday.

Killed in the accident were non-commissioned officer Carlos Alberto Vieira Figueiredo and sergeant Roberto Lopes dos Santos.

"In an act of heroism, they were precisely in the area of major risk in a bid to extinguish a fire and they did not succeed," Amorim said Saturday.

Navy sergeant Luciano Gomes Medeiros, who was also lightly injured, was first treated at a nearby Arctowski Polish Antarctic station and later transferred to the Chilean Eduardo Frei military base.

About 30 researchers, one alpinist and a Brazilian environment ministry representative who were at the base during the fire were evacuated by helicopter to Chile's nearby Eduardo Frei base. The Argentine Air Force flew them to the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas.