- MOSCOW -- Rescuers in helicopters
and ski planes have been preparing a mission to evacuate 12 Russian scientists
stranded on a crumbling ice floe after most of their research station was
swallowed up by the freezing Arctic seas on Wednesday.
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- All 12 were said to be safe and huddling together for
warmth in two surviving huts after "a giant wall of ice" crushed
their floating installation and carried away four of the station's six
buildings.
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- The scientists, all experienced Arctic hands who had
been living on the ice for nearly a year, recording weather conditions
and studying climate change, had to scramble frantically to save themselves
and some of their equipment as their station collapsed and began slipping
into the water.
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- "Everyone is in a good mood, everything is all right,"
the expedition's leader, Vladimir Koshelyev, told Russian TV by radio link.
"We have supplies for about five days." Russia's deputy speaker
of parliament, Artur Chilingarov, a former Arctic explorer, was shown on
TV assuring the castaways that all measures would be taken to save them.
"Don't worry, we'll see you return to the motherland soon," he
told them.
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- The North Pole-32 station has drifted nearly 3,000km
(1,800 miles) around the Pole since it was set up last April to study climate
change in the Arctic.
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- The scientists, who had been planning to end their work
on 20 March, may have received an unwelcome lesson in global warming when
the ice sheet they were living on began cracking up two weeks before and
drifting further south than expected.
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- Russia's most famous northern explorer, Vladimir Sokolov,
told state TV there was "no cause for panic" because "events
like this are the norm in Arctic latitudes, and these people are trained
to handle it".
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- Russian border guards and emergency service workers have
mobilised several aircraft, including a heavy Mi-26 helicopter and two
ski-equipped An-26 transport planes. They will fly them this weekend from
the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Arctic Ocean's
Svalbard archipelago, about 700km away from the last known site of the
wrecked station. An official of the Emergency Services Ministry said that
teams were hoping to reach the researchers during the weekend, but was
unsure whether it would be possible to land on the disintegrating ice floe.
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- Gales have made efforts to drop supplies to the stranded
group impossible, but winds were forecast to drop by tomorrow. The air
temperature in the area was minus 20C, and should pose no problem, rescue
workers said. Staff at a hospital in the mining town of Longyearbyen were
on alert.
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- North Pole-32 was Russia's first venture of its type
since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. A decade of harsh budget-cutting
has left Russia, the world's largest northern nation, with almost no scientific
presence in the Arctic.
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- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=498361
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