Russia rescues stranded polar scientists

Russian helicopters plucked a team of stranded scientists from deep within the Arctic Circle on Saturday after their research station was all but crushed beneath a wall of ice, officials told Reuters.

Emergency teams flew four hours from one of Europe’s most northerly settlements to reach the Severny Polyus-32 station, where the 12 unharmed researchers huddled for three days in temperatures of minus 38 Fahrenheit.

“Two helicopters on Saturday evening delivered the 12 explorers from Severny Polyus-32 to (Norway’s Arctic Spitzbergen archipelago),” an emergencies ministry spokesman said.

The meteorologists raised the alarm on Wednesday, after their windswept outpost was decimated by a 30-foot high ice wall that reared up from the surrounding floe and drove much of the base down into the icy water beneath.

The freak incident left them stranded in the tattered remnants of their accommodation, 450 miles from the nearest land on a drifting ice floe.

Authorities launched a rescue mission but progress was hampered by vast distances and freezing conditions in Europe’s Arctic north, and by difficulties in landing heavy helicopters on the sheet ice under the base.

“Such a long flight is a challenge in itself in areas where people haven’t flown so much before,” said Odd Olsen, the senior Norwegian official on Spitzbergen. “And there are few alternative landing spots.”

The mission has raised Russian memories of the dramatic 1930s Arctic rescue of over 100 people stranded after their ship sank. The operation became a byword for Soviet heroism.

Russia’s first permanent research station near the North Pole since the fall of the Soviet Union ended generous scientific funding, Severny Polyus-32, was seen as a symbol of the country’s return to polar exploration.

The base had almost completed a full polar circle on drift ice since its launch in April last year.

The scientists managed to rescue during their evacuation much of the data collected by them during their studies, Itar-Tass agency quoted the deputy head of Russia’s meteorological service, which ran the base, as saying.