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Isbjørn at Isfjord: Polar bear ransacks food storage room at Isfjord Radio before governor’s helicopter scares it off

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A polar bear broke into a food storage room at Isfjord Radio on Sunday morning and spent a couple of hours eating chocolates, shredding bags of food waste, crushing wine bottles and shattering windows before it was finally scared off by a rescue helicopter, according to officials and observers.

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Food and other items are strewn about in a storage room at Isfjord Radio after a polar bear ransacked it Sunday morning. Photo by Simon Idsø / Isfjord Radio.

The bear, believed to be a large male, was discovered shortly before 7 a.m. by Station Manager Malin Stark.

“The first thing I saw was that the entrance door was broken and the first thing I felt was irritation,” she told Svalbardposten, which first reported the incident. “It’s only been a short time since we got a new entrance because the previous one was also destroyed by a polar bear.”

When she looked through a window she saw bags of food waste torn open and then heard noises, indicating the bear was still inside. She told NRK the bear appeared confined by the space.

“The bear was clearly stressed,” she said. “He had broken all the small windows along the wall. He realized that it was not possible to get out of the same way he came in.”

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Employees at Isfjord Radio stand guard outside a storage room that a polar bear broke into. Photo by Simon Idsø / Isfjord Radio.

Stark called The Governor of Svalbard and then stood watch outside the building with other station employees until the rescue helicopter arrived. The animal escaped as the helicopter approached at about 9:30 a.m.

“He got out through a little window,” Stark said. “After having been locked in for a few hours, the sound was the extra motivation he needed.”

There were five employees and ten visitors at the station, which is now used as a guest lodge, but officials said none were ever in any apparent danger, according to a statement by the governor’s office. The visitors departed the station later during the day and no new visitors are expected until next week.

Videos by station staff and visitors of the bear’s visit and escape quickly circulated widely on news and social media websites.

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Videos of a polar bear trapped in a storage room and escaping on Sunday are posted on Facebook Sunday by Marit Devik during her visit to Icefjord Radio.

“A ‘little’ exciting start to the day here at Isfjord Radio,” wrote Marit Devik, a visitor who posted videos of the bear as seen from her room and its escape on her Facebook page. “I had basically given up to getting to see any special animals this weekend…settled for a spa weekend instead.”

After watching the bear’s prologued struggles, “we felt jubilation when we saw it run freely…as it should,” she wrote.

 

 

 

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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