A morning call to 911 and a submerged car
The emergency began shortly after 8:20 on Saturday, when a call to the 911 system reported that a vehicle had gone into the water at the corner of Antonio Silva street and Entrada 1 of the Doña Flora stream, on the outskirts of Ensenada in Buenos Aires province. Patrol units from the Ensenada command were sent to the scene. On arrival, officers found a silver-grey Ford Focus sitting in the channel with a woman still inside the cabin.[S1][S2][S3][S4]
The occupant was a 76-year-old retired woman who lives in the neighbourhood and was unable to get out of the vehicle on her own. According to the police report, the car had ended up in the stream for reasons still under investigation and was left half-submerged near the bank. The incident drew a substantial deployment of police and medical personnel to the area.[S1][S2][S4]
The sergeant who went into the water
Sergeant Marcela Corbalán of the Buenos Aires province Police, assigned to the Ensenada patrol command, entered the stream with operational support from her patrol partner, Sergeant Tamara Rodríguez, and two men. Together they managed to extract the driver from the cabin and move her to safety on the roadway. Monitoring cameras captured the moment of the rescue, and footage later circulated showing the vehicle almost entirely beneath the surface of the stream.[S1][S2][S3][S4]
An ambulance from the Emergency Medical Care System arrived minutes later. Its medical team attended to both the retired woman and the sergeant and confirmed that neither was in danger and that neither had serious injuries. The driver was described as being in excellent condition, and the officer who rescued her was likewise unharmed.[S1][S2][S3][S4]
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A political dispute over who answers for the road
Hours after the accident, near midday, former Ensenada mayor Adalberto del Negro criticised the current municipal administration led by Mario Secco on social media. Del Negro governed the district from 1991 until 2003, when Secco took office and has remained in power since, and he ran for mayor again in 2015 with the Frente Renovador.[S1]
Del Negro invoked provincial traffic law 13.927 and national law 24.449, arguing that whichever authority has jurisdiction over a road, whether the provincial roads agency or the relevant municipality, is legally responsible for ensuring that defensive road-safety elements are in place wherever circulation faces severe risks, such as sharp drops or unprotected edges beside watercourses and deep channels. He directed his conclusion at Secco personally.[S1]
A recurring hazard on the region's waterways
The episode echoes an earlier case in the region. A month before, residents of Ringuelet spotted a Volkswagen Amarok with tinted windows and a closed canopy inside the Arroyo del Gato, near the junction of streets 1 and 514 in La Plata. Neighbours who saw the vehicle under the bridge alerted 911 at around 10:30, prompting a response from firefighters, Buenos Aires province police and the Directorate of Special Risks.[S2]
Because the dark glass and sealed canopy made it impossible to see inside, specialist personnel entered the stream using kayaks to approach the vehicle, inspected the interior and checked the surrounding area. Once they ruled out the presence of occupants, attention shifted to working out how the vehicle had reached that point of the stream.[S2]
