Stranded TV Crew Rescued From Remote Arctic Island
A helicopter rescue team today reached a three-man television crew that had been stranded on a remote Arctic island, rescuers said.
The helicopter, sent by an international medical emergency company, landed on frozen Wrangel Island, company spokesman Mark Crawford said.
“They’re in fair spirits,” Crawford said. “They’re surviving, of course, but they were down to their last three days of food.”
The crew arrived on Wrangel Island on Sept. 2 to make a documentary on polar bears. The trio intended to leave Oct. 15 but was delayed by bad weather.
The crew had been holed up in a cabin on the island’s northeast coast, about 350 miles northwest of Alaska. Residents of a village about 80 miles from the cabin had been trying to drive a snow tractor to take emergency supplies to the crew but were hampered by bad weather.
Emergency officials earlier offered to try to rescue the crew by snow tractor, but the three reportedly turned down the offer because they would have been forced to leave most of their equipment behind, Russia’s ORT television said.
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