Tourists stranded on ice floe, The Canadian military has airdropped supplies to a group of tourists stranded on an ice floe drifting out to sea in the Arctic.
Nearly two dozen people travelling with an adventure holiday group were set adrift after a 30-mile-long slab of ice tore away from Baffin Island, in the far north of Canada, sometime between Monday night and early Tuesday morning.
Police say the group, which includes local guides and Canadian as well as foreign tourists, will probably be stranded there until Wednesday morning, when rescue helicopters being sent from hundreds of miles away in Eureka on Ellesmere Island, are likely to arrive on the scene.
Major Steve Neta of the Royal Canadian Air Force said the Hercules aircraft from Winnipeg had located the tourists and dropped survival rescue kits, which include large life-rafts as well as other equipment.
A spokesman for the Royal Canadian mounted police, Corporal Yvonne Niego, said a number of hunters, who were also trapped, had managed to cross over on to land by Tuesday afternoon, after the chunk of ice split and their end drifted close to the shore.
The local search and rescue co-ordinator in Arctic Bay, Niore Iqalukjuak, said on Tuesday the hunters were on land and would be picked up in the evening: "They are on fairly flat lands and they're not by cliffs, so it shouldn't be any problem picking up the hunters." He added that the floe was 12km (7.8 miles) offshore.
The Arctic Kingdom tour operator, which likens its trips to African safaris but instead promises the chance to spot polar bears, seals, narwhals and sea birds, said there were no reported injuries.
In a statement on its website on Tuesday, the company said that travellers on the "great migrations of the North-West Passage programme" were at their camp on the ice in Admiralty Inlet, on Baffin Island, "about 12km from its original position".
"Favourable evening tides should help slow the ice movement until helicopters from Newfoundland arrive at the scene in the next 12 hours. Arctic Kingdom is working with Nunavut Protection Services, the local Arctic Bay search and rescue organisation, Joint Task Force North from Iqaluit, and the Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Trenton, Ontario, to help co-ordinate efforts by air and sea to retrieve the group."
"There are no injuries, the camp is still intact, and the travellers are in good spirits," the company added.
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Tourists stranded on ice floe
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