NORTH POLE: A Russian rescue team flew into the Arctic yesterday to make final preparations to airlift 12 scientists from an ice floe near the North Pole.
A helicopter was due to start searching for the stranded researchers this morning, 2½ days after a massive wall of ice crushed their floating scientific base, where they had spent almost a year studying weather patterns and climate change.
A cargo plane was also ready to ferry the remains of the Severny Polyus-32 station back to dry land after the freak, 10-metre ice wall sent most of its buildings, food and fuel plunging beneath the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean.
"Early tomorrow morning we should reach the ice floe aboard a Mi-26 helicopter," said rescue co-ordinator Mr Artur Chilingarov, a parliamentarian and president of the Russian Association of Polar Explorers.
The aircraft and rescue teams from the National Emergencies Ministry headed for Norway's Spitzbergen archipelago last night, and face a 700km flight to where the remains of Severny Polyus-32 are floating.
An atomic icebreaker, the Arktika, left the Barents Sea port of Murmansk for the area yesterday to provide a second chance of rescue should the airborne attempt fail. The ship is expected to take five days to reach the shattered camp.
The scientists have enough food for about four more days and have gathered in two shelters that survived the ice attack on Wednesday evening.
"We are all in good health, in good form. We are all alive and well. We will go on gradually, and wait for the helicopter," Mr Vladimir Koshelev, leader of the station, said on Thursday night. The base was Russia's first at the North Pole since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russian television showed Mr Chilingarov and his team receiving a blessing from a Russian Orthodox priest before the rescue effort. "The place is at the limit of our flying range, is devoid of all points of reference and utterly white," said Mr Igor Lavrenyuk, deputy commander of the air squadron.