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Home* News and Stories → Search-and-res­cue (SAR) ope­ra­ti­ons can be expen­si­ve

Search-and-res­cue (SAR) ope­ra­ti­ons can be expen­si­ve

…or, rather: they ARE expen­si­ve, but in the future you are more likely to pay yours­elf. So far, the­re have alre­a­dy been 52 heli­c­op­ter SAR ope­ra­ti­ons, com­pared to a total of 72 in 2008 and 60 in 2007, a signi­fi­cant increase. The most spec­ta­cu­lar case was a long-distance heli­c­op­ter flight from Spits­ber­gen to nor­t­her­most Green­land and back to evacua­te a Dane with acu­te health pro­blems. In a lar­ge num­ber of cases, snow-mobi­le or ski tou­rists have been evacua­ted in Spits­ber­gen, when frost or bad wea­ther star­ted to take a toll. The Sys­sel­man­nen sees an increased rea­di­ness to use the satel­li­te pho­ne or emer­gen­cy loca­tor bea­con. Adi­tio­nal­ly, too many tou­rists (inclu­ding locals) seem not to be well enough pre­pared with equip­ment ade­qua­te for all pos­si­ble high arc­tic con­di­ti­ons and wil­ling­ness to spend a cou­ple of days in a self-built snow cave, a com­mon and usual­ly safe method to sus­tain during extre­me wea­ther con­di­ti­ons seems to decrease.

The Sys­sel­man­nen con­siders to use the “pol­lu­ter pays prin­ci­ple” in the future.

Expen­si­ve: the Sys­sel­man­nen heli­c­op­ter
(here seen during an exer­cise)

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten

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last modification: 2014-07-01 · copyright: Rolf Stange
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