A small plane with two sick US workers arrived safely in Chile late Wednesday after leaving Antarctica in a daring rescue mission from a remote South Pole research station, officials said.
Advertisement
For the third time ever, rescue workers have successfully evacuated someone from the South Pole during the brutal Antarctic winter, the National Science Foundation said Wednesday afternoon.
The plane that rescued them – a hardy Twin Otter operated by the Canadian firm Kenn Borek Air – is one of the only aircraft capable of flying at the low temperatures at the pole. It wasn’t known until Wednesday whether the second ailing worker would also be evacuated.
Currently, there are 48 people working at Amundsen-Scott station, including a doctor and a physician’s assistant, but in some cases, they can not provide the medical care their workers need.
Flights are discouraged between February and October due to the extremely cold and dark conditions – the only lighting for the landing being provided by the moon and the aurora australis.
The extreme cold can affect a lot of things on airplanes, including the fuel, which needs to be warmed up before takeoff is even attempted.
Near the world’s southernmost point, workers spend this period withstanding almost complete darkness and dramatically low temperatures, on Tuesday, the thermometer dropped to -60 degrees Celsius (-76 degrees Fahrenheit).
The National Science Foundation, which runs the Amundsen-Scott station, would not identify the workers, who are employees of Lockheed Martin, nor their medical conditions. There are 48 people – 39 men and nine women – at the station.
The team left the South Pole station on early Wednesday, then flew back to Rothera with the two workers on board, and arrived at one p.m. ET., as declared by Peter West, spokesman for the National Science Foundation, according to The Washington Post.
The 1999 flight, which was done in Antarctic spring with slightly better conditions, rescued the station’s doctor, Jerri Nielsen, who had breast cancer and had been treating herself. Rescues also were done in 2001 and 2003, both for gallbladder problems.
The station is located just 250 metres from the geographical South Pole. Researchers there are studying the atmosphere and dark matter using two radio telescopes, as well as an observatory that monitors subatomic particles produced by black holes and other cosmic incidents. They both landed at Rothera, the British Antarctic Survey station on the Antarctic Peninsula, Monday and waited for a window of good weather to complete the last 1,500 miles of the journey.
In this photo provided by the National Science Foundation, a small plane picks up a sick worker at the U.S. South Pole science station.
“We are very, very concerned and will be until this is over”, said Kelly Falkner, director of the foundation’s polar programs, had said before the mission.
Advertisement
The sick workers – employees of the US company Lockheed Martin – were taken to the Rothera base, a British research station on the Antarctic peninsula, and are later expected to be flown to a hospital in South America, West said, without giving further details.
