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‘May take a few days’: Search by military sub for missing helicopter near Barentsburg may take time due to weather, size of area

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A military remote-controlled submarine brought to the site near Barentsburg where a Russian helicopter carrying eight people may have crashed Thursday may need days to fully search the seabed to determine if the aircraft is there, according to officials.

“The area is relatively large and no good observations of wreckage have been made known to me,” Frode Urke, commanding officer of the Norwegian Coast Guard’s Barentshav, told TV2 late Saturday morning. “It is very difficult to say so early in the phase.”

The Hugin submarine was loaded aboard the Barentshav and departed Longyearbyen at about 10 a.m. Saturday morning. TV2, citing Urke, noted the search area is several square kilometers, stormy weather is expected this weekend and “it should always be assumed that it may take a few days before they know more.”

The search is being coordinated by the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre of Northern Norway, which is still classifying the effort as a search-and-rescue mission despite officials admitting the chances of finding survivors are low. So far only a few scattered oil spills and some air bubbles from the primary area of focus have been located.

The helicopter, carrying three Russian researchers and five Russian crew members on a flight from Pyramiden, disappeared from radar about two to three kilometers from Barentsburg without sending a distress signal at about 3:45 p.m. Witnesses said they observed lights from the helicopter as it approached the Russian settlement and an SAS airplane reported seeing a glowing light at the apparent crash site.

A smaller remote-controlled submarine brought to the site Friday searched the area without success.

 

About Post Author

Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.
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